


The High School AU of Rassilon

by clockworkouroboros



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: (sort of?), Alternate Universe - High School, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Multi, Slow Burn, longfic, the galligang is in a stereotypical cliche teen movie high school
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22292131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkouroboros/pseuds/clockworkouroboros
Summary: Narvin just wants a quiet, easy junior year of high school. Unfortunately, no one else in the school seems to feel the same way.
Relationships: Irving Braxiatel/Narvin, Irving Braxiatel/Romana II, Leela (Doctor Who)/Narvin (Doctor Who), Leela/Romana II, Narvin/Romana II
Comments: 180
Kudos: 59





	1. Sunglasses and Sarcasm

**Author's Note:**

> A big shoutout to all the many people who contributed ideas to this AU, which started out as a group chat conversation, which was then memorialized by copy/pasting the texts into a google doc (and that’s something like 30k words), and now I’m finally turning it into a story?  
> Anyway, I definitely could not do this without the 30k words worth of ideas backing me up, so thanks guys.

It was August. The grass was green, the sun was hot, corn towered ten feet high in the fields outside of town.

Leela should know. She’d just spent all summer working in the fields, getting up before even the midsummer sun had risen and working until she legally wasn’t allowed to work anymore. She did it for the money, yes, but she also did it for the pure enjoyment of doing a physical activity. She relished the cuts she inevitably got from the cornstalks, enjoyed the feeling of tired muscles, and the hot sun warming her, or sucking on what was left of the ice in her giant water bottle. This was good, satisfying work, and it would be fantastic for when cross-country practice started up. She was almost looking forward to school, if only because the weather would still be nice enough for her to wear her ripped shorts and show off her calf muscles. She’d be able to see her boyfriend of twenty-five months (his words, not hers; she would have just said two years, but Andred was more particular than her) every day, she was hoping to make varsity for all the different teams she was trying out for, and her English had been steadily improving during her weekly make-out sessions with Andred. (Alright, so he was supposed to be tutoring her in English over the summer so that she got a better grade this year, but they mostly kissed. It was a wonder she’d learned any English over the summer the way those tutoring sessions had gone.)

But there was too much about the coming school year for her to actually be excited. There would be all the whispering and two-faced people, the ones who were nice to her face and then made fun of her behind her back. She was dreading seeing Darkel or Torvald or Matthias again; they were the worst perpetrators of two-faced bigotry. She knew they made fun of her accent and her broken English behind her back. They weren’t even that subtle about it.

And then there was school. No matter how hard Leela tried (and she  _ did _ try, except for maybe when she was making out with Andred), she struggled. She was naturally athletic, not naturally book-smart. She liked to think she was still smarter than all the so-called smart kids, if only because they were all lacking in this small thing called common sense. All of these kids were so intelligent in class, but the moment they had to deal with each other, it was like they had no clue how to behave. Narvin surely couldn’t call attention to every single person who broke the dress code, and Darkel surely couldn’t spend  _ all _ her time talking about the evils of immigration, and Trave surely couldn’t spend all  _ his _ time (and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in earshot) about how he couldn’t wait to graduate, because he was going to go to West Point and then he’d be able to work his way up through the ranks of the army. Or navy. Or Air Force. Or Marines. Or whichever branch he wanted to join, she didn’t know. It was exhausting, listening to all these people talk all the time, with no regard for those around them.

It was enough to make her occasionally miss her old home, even if she much preferred living here. At least her skills were appreciated back home. 

Or perhaps she was just hanging out with the wrong crowd. Perhaps she should try and become friends with more of Andred’s friends. She knew Hallan didn’t like her, but maybe it was just Hallan. Maybe Janartis would be nicer, or Annos, or Maxil.

She sighed just thinking about it, tucking behind her ear a strand of red hair that had worked its way out of her braid. It was almost the start of junior year. Surely she should have friends by now, friends who didn’t look down on her or pity her for her thick accent and bad English, friends who didn’t think her stupid for being religious, friends who accepted her for who she was.

That made her roll her eyes. If it was junior year and she still didn’t have friends, then maybe the people at this stupid school just weren’t going to accept her. She shouldn’t have to try so hard to get them to like her, and she wouldn’t. If they were going to ostracize her for being an immigrant, then maybe she should talk to her parents about it, see if she could go live with her grandparents, finish school up there.

...But that was a bad idea, too. Her grandparents were nice, but they were so strict and religious and old-fashioned. Her best friend, Romana, made fun of Leela for being religious, but she’d never met Leela’s grandparents. In comparison, she was a paragon of rational thought.

Besides, she couldn’t just leave Andred. He was the one person (besides maybe Romana or Braxiatel) that she could trust. They’d been dating for two whole years now (twenty-five months, he’d texted her just the other day!) and Andred had never once made fun of her accent or English, or the way she struggled with her math homework. He’d been kind and supportive the whole time, and she couldn’t believe she’d been lucky enough to start dating him almost as soon as she moved to the US.

It was settled, then. She’d put up with the rest of the stupid, stupid kids at their school for him. For Andred. He deserved that much, at least. It wasn’t his fault the rest of the kids in this town hated her so much. They’d just have to learn to put up with her.

She rolled over on her bed to reach her phone and turn off the music she was blaring through a speaker, then slipped on flip-flops and found a pair of sunglasses. “Come, K9,” she said, beckoning with her hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”

A massive, long-haired dog whose head reached at least as high as Leela’s waist, sprang up from where it had been laying on the floor, just past the foot of her bed, and followed her out of the room, panting, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, and a huge dog-grin on its face.

The moment they got out of her room, K9 took off down the hall and down the stairs. It was a smart dog, and it had heard the word  _ walk, _ so you could hardly blame it for jumping to the obvious conclusion that it should find its leash and wait by the front door, leash in drooly mouth.

When Leela caught up, laughing, always excited by K9’s enthusiasm at the magic word, the dog’s tail thumped on the ground at an even more frenetic pace. “You are a good dog, K9!” Leela told him, trying to tug the leash out of his mouth. He mistook her actions and tugged back, turning it into a game of tug of war. “You will soon be better at understanding English than I am!”

The dog relented, and Leela stumbled backwards a few steps, leash in hand. She clipped it to K9’s collar. “Good boy,” she said again, and then opened the door.

They took a walk every day. Leela made sure of it. K9 needed the exercise, and Leela was always ready to give him attention. Her parents liked the dog, but he was Leela’s. He slept in her room, followed her around the house, and she took care of everything he could possibly need. (And she had named him, her first joke on the English language.)

Leela wasn’t one for schedules, but for K9, she’d make an exception. Every day at 4:30, she took him on the same two-mile walk. She has since she picked him up at the shelter, shortly after moving to the US. Her parents thought it would be helpful for her in acclimatizing to a new country, and they were right. K9 was probably closer to her best friend than any of her human friends.

...Not that she’d tell Romana, whom she could see waiting for her at the corner up ahead. She wore a sundress and large sunglasses, her hair in two tight braids, and with her was her own dog on a leash. Romana was an imperious blonde girl who seemed like she should definitely be taller than she actually was. She was the daughter of some wealthy family — her parents did something with fancy wine, and they were apparently quite good at it, given the size of their house and the sorts of clothes Romana wore. She was smart and ambitious and probably could have graduated at age fourteen, and travelled the world with her family (and probably a team of nannies and tutors) for her later elementary school years.

Her own dog is also named K9. She got it shortly after becoming friends with Leela, and named it as a joke, saying that hers was the “more superior model.” That was just how Romana talked, Leela had learned. Her dog was a tiny little thing that yapped at Leela’s dog every chance it got. 

“School starts tomorrow,” Romana said, as Leela fell into step beside her. Her blonde hair was in tight braids, not a strand out of place, a stark contrast to Leela. 

“I know this, Romana,” Leela said, wishing the words didn’t sound so awkward in her mouth. “Are you excited?”

Romana laughed then, although Leela suspected she was being sarcastic. “You could say that,” she replied. “I’m just wondering what will happen this year. You know, after Brax’s little brother ran away. What will the others have to say about it?”

“This has been talked about all summer,” Leela said. “Why would it continue into the autumn?”

“Because Darkel didn’t have the opportunity to use that information to her advantage over the summer, I’d expect,” Romana said, sounding suddenly weary. “She won’t let it get old, no matter how much Brax might like it to.”

Brax was another friend of theirs, a dark-haired boy who dressed in three-piece suits and used big words because it made other people feel stupid. He was the oldest of Romana’s little group of friends, and even if it  _ was _ only by a week, he never let anyone else forget it. People might have made fun of him for his eccentricities, but everyone else was a little terrified of him. He was very good at intimidation, Leela had learned, and she was glad that she was the one person his tactics didn’t work on. He was also completely and totally in love with Romana, and he had been ever since they were kids. Too bad Romana was oblivious.

“But Darkel is afraid of Brax, isn’t she?”

Romana sighed. “I think so, but she also hates him. She’ll never forgive him for stealing the show from her back in eighth grade.”

“Brax did what?” Leela had never heard this story before.

“You don’t know?” Romana glanced at her sideways, out of the corners of her eyes. “Oh, I suppose not, since you didn’t move until — what was it, the end of June? — before freshman year. Alright.” She sighed again, but this time there was a hint of amusement underneath it all. “Back in eighth grade, everyone was obsessed with theatre.”

Leela knew that when Romana said  _ everyone, _ she really meant,  _ the kids I end up hanging out with the most. _ Brax, Narvin, Darkel, Trave, Livia, Matthias. Maybe a few others, like Hallan or Annos, but they generally stuck to sports.

“Anyway,” Romana continued, “We did Peter Pan, and Brax was cast as Captain Hook.” She grinned at the memory. “It was inspired casting. Even in eighth grade, Brax was good at doing his whole evil-villain routine. And he’d figured out how to control when his voice broke, even if he couldn’t stop it entirely yet, and he played it up. Stole the show.”

“I can imagine,” Leela said, laughing. 

“Yes, he had the audience just breathless with laughter. I think our middle school production of Peter Pan was better than whatever it was the high school did that year. I think Fiddler? Anyway, Darkel had been cast as Wendy, and she wanted to be the star of the show. After all, Wendy  _ is _ a main character. But–” Romana lowered her voice– “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but Darkel has a tendency to overact, and she takes it all  _ so _ seriously.” Romana paused to push her sunglasses back up her nose from where they had slid. “And no one could get her to do anything other than the way  _ she _ wanted to do it.” Romana grimaced. “Honestly, Darkel would probably listen to the eerie whispering of a cursed ghost before listening to good advice.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course, when we performed it, everyone loved Brax. He was easily the star. The perfect evil-villain, with perfectly timed voice cracks. The audience loved it.”

“And Darkel did not like this?” Leela asked, knowing full well that Darkel would have hated it. She didn’t go through elementary and middle school with these kids, but some people never change, and Darkel was one of those people. She liked being the center of attention, she was bossy, and she liked to turn everything into a weird sort of war. Leela got the feeling she’d be very good at politics.

Romana shot her a look. “What do  _ you _ think?” she retorted. “This is  _ Darkel _ we’re talking about. She thought Brax was deliberately trying to upstage her.” She paused. “Well. Maybe he was. It wasn’t like any of the rest of us minded, and none of us were big on Darkel at the time.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. Point is, Darkel has been holding a grudge against him ever since. She probably still will use it as evidence that Brax and his entire family are evil, just because he was more popular in a middle school production of Peter _ fucking  _ Pan.”

“And she hates you because you are friends with him?” Leela asked. She’d been friends with Romana’s group, or sort of friends with them, pretty much since freshman year, but she’d never heard why Darkel hated Romana so much. Or any of Romana’s friends, for that matter.

“Oh, I’m sure she does,” Romana replied airily. “But she also hates the fact that I’m better at debating than she is. And she’s  _ very _ conservative, you know.” She raises a single eyebrow, more arch than any high school junior had the right to be. “I mean, the sort of conservative who thinks any immigrants are actually evil.”

“Yes, I know,” Leela stated, her voice as dry as the day was humid. “I have spoken to her before.”

That made Romana laugh for real, and that made Leela smile. Romana was a very… sarcastic person. Leela wasn’t quite sure what word she could use to describe her friend. She had a very dismal view of the world around her, preferring to take as much emotion out of everything as possible. The flowers were not beautiful, they were simply trying to get pollinated. Apples weren’t tasty, they had evolved to taste good, and human senses had evolved to like the taste, so that the apple seeds could get scattered and more apple trees could go. With everything, it was survival of the fittest, life reduced to nothing more than chemical reactions. And Leela had discovered that it was very difficult to get Romana to genuinely enjoy herself. Everything had to have a reason, or have some kind of little irony that she could smirk at. To hear her laugh, truly, without any sarcasm in her voice, was a rare thing.

Leela wasn’t like that. She loved seeing the world around her, loved the way she could interact, and the way her senses worked together to create what she saw and heard and felt and tasted and smelled. It was all so incredible, so beautiful, so awe-inspiring. How anyone could just ignore the world around them was a mystery to her, but so was Romana’s constant stream of cynicism. How could  _ anyone _ look at the world and only see the cruelty of nature? It just didn’t make sense.

She and Romana were two very different people. Their only common factor was gone now, Brax’s 14-year-old brother Theta. Romana’s family had been friends with Brax’s for years. Leela had bonded with Theta the summer before freshman year. He was a tall boy, already taller than Brax, with a head of curly brown hair, wide eyes, and a smile that was all teeth. He was enigmatic, just like his older brother, but in a way that was entirely unlike his older brother. He did odd things and wore strange clothes, and tried his best to look like a cross between a pirate, a homeless man, and a mad professor, while Brax had his three-piece suits and immaculately combed hair. He wore a ridiculously long scarf all the time and kept anything and everything in his pockets, while Brax accessorized with a pocket watch and hated even bringing a backpack to school. He hated Brax, and Brax hated him, and they preferred to pretend they weren’t related. The Lungbarrows were an odd family indeed.

And now Theta had run off with his best friend (possibly his boyfriend? Leela had never been certain about their relationship) to who knew where. It wasn’t new news, but it certainly wasn’t old.

“Darkel will try to use Theta’s dis… dis… disapp… his running away against Brax, but I am sure Brax will think of something,” Leela said. She felt a lot more confident than her voice sounded, and she silently cursed her bad English once more. “Brax is full of tricks.”

Romana glanced at her, eyebrow raised. “You know, Leela,” she said. “You astonish me.”

Leela raised her eyebrows in return, confused. She brushed more strands of red hair behind her ears impatiently, annoyed that her braid was coming out. “What do you mean?” she asked warily. It was never a good thing when Romana started giving out compliments like that.

“Just that you’re so smart about so many things,” Romana replied. “But you phrase it in such odd ways.” She paused. “It must be frustrating,” she added sympathetically, “to have to work around a language barrier.”

“It is,” Leela said, nodding emphatically, her loose strands of hair coming back from behind her ears to frame her face. “But I have good news, Romana.”

“What is it?”

“I will be in a regular English class this year!”

Romana stopped walking and turned to actually face Leela, none of that glancing at her out of the corners of her eyes. “That’s great news!” she exclaimed, sounding every bit as excited as Leela. “I knew you could do it.”

Leela slumped. “But my parents want me to get a tutor for math,” she added. She knew she was sulking about it, but she didn’t like feeling stupid. 

“Do you want me to help?” Romana asked quickly.

“No, Brax already agreed.

Romana’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “Well, he’ll be great at it,” she said. “I have full confidence in him.”

_ Of course you do, _ Leela thought, and then immediately felt guilty about it. Just because Brax was in love with Romana didn’t mean Romana was in love with Brax. The most interest Romana had ever shown in him was just in having him as one of her closest friends.

Before Leela could tease Romana about her non-existent crush, though, her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her back pocket to find a message from Andred.

_ Hey babe, _ he’d texted.  _ I have to cancel our study session tonight, hallan is having a rough time. _

_ What happened?  _ Leela texted back.

_ Some girl made out with him and then dumped him.  _

She raised her eyebrows at that, and then put her phone back in her pocket. Hallan wasn’t her favorite person in the world, and she knew she wasn’t his favorite. Andred sometimes said that there was no love lost between her and Hallan, and then he would get an odd look on his face and say, “Oh. I sound like my mother now.”

Leela tried to at least respect Hallan, but it would be a lot easier if he respected her, too. He was old friends with Andred and one of the best athletes in the school. At least half the student body had had a crush on him at one point or another, and Leela knew Andred would definitely kiss him if given the chance. (And then immediately feel guilty about it and deliver a tearful confession to Leela. That was just how Andred operated.) 

The problem with Hallan was that he was just so  _ unpleasant. _ He may have been good-looking, and he may have been incredible at sports (for a sophomore), but he had a terrible personality. Leela wasn’t sure whether she should feel sorry for Hallan, for getting used by a girl for a quick make-out session, or if she should feel sorry for the girl, who had chosen one of the least-pleasant people on the planet to kiss.

Alright, so maybe Hallan wasn’t the  _ least _ pleasant person on the planet. Darkel was worse. And Narvin. But he was up there.

“What happened?” Romana asked, and Leela jumped slightly.

She shrugged. “Andred cancelled our study session tonight.” She tried not to sound annoyed as she added, flatly, “Again.”

Romana rolled her eyes at that, Leela could just see it through the sunglasses. “You should dump him,” she replied, matter of fact. “I mean, the only reason you like him is because he’s the first guy you met over here.”

“And he is handsome and kind and funny,” Leela retorted. This was a common argument she had with Romana. Her friend thought she could do so much better than Andred, and Leela defended her choice to stay with him every time. “I would not have dated him for two years if I did not love him.”

“I just think you’re too good for him,” Romana said, pushing her sunglasses up her nose. Leela wasn’t sure if Romana was just sweaty in the hot August sun, or if the sunglasses were too big for her petite face. Or perhaps it was a combination of the two. “Andred is the type of person who’ll eventually live five minutes away from the house he grew up in, and he’ll actually be okay with it.” She stopped for a moment, then added, “He’s wanted to be a cop right here in Gallifrey since he was about five years old, just like his dad. I’m just saying, you deserve someone better than  _ him.” _

“And who would you suggest?” Leela asked, half teasing.

Romana opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Alright, you got me,” she conceded. “There aren’t a whole lot of great guys at school.” She paused, considering. “What about Annos?” she suggested.

“Annos is a freshman,” Leela replied, making a face. “He is a baby.”

“Fair point,” Romana agreed. She stopped walking in front of a long, winding driveway. “Anyway, this is where I leave you. Do you want to come inside for some water or lemonade or something?”

“I should not,” Leela said, apologetic. “Your parents do not like my K9. He gets fur everywhere, remember?”

Romana grinned. “Don’t I just,” she replied. She gave Leela a quick hug — the most anyone ever got from Romana — and a tiny wave. “Well,” she said. “See you tomorrow!” She picked up her K9, who was panting and trying to avoid being licked by Leela’s dog, and set off up the driveway, to the near-mansion at the end.

“Enjoy your last night of freedom!” Leela called after her, then continued on her way, stopping every few seconds to let K9 sniff at the grass. Since Andred had cancelled, that meant she would have to spend the night actually preparing for school, not just kissing someone. She sighed. It would be boring.

She checked her phone again, just to see if anyone else had texted her, but no one had. She put it back in her pocket.

“Come, K9,” she said. “Let’s finish our walk.”


	2. A Great Start to the Year

It was a relief to be going back to school, Narvin realized. Not that he  _ liked _ school; he didn’t think it was possible for anyone to actually enjoy school. But it was nice to have an excuse to stay out of the house. It was nice to have an excuse to stay out of the house that didn’t involve hanging out with other people.

Of course, he’d still have to hang out with other people. But since he didn’t really have friends, and he didn’t really care to have friends, it would all be fine.

Unfortunately, some people at school did seem to think of him as a friend, no matter how unpleasant he tried to be, and as he walked to school, he was bombarded by one of them.

“Narvin!” It was Torvald, a scrawny, pimply boy, one of those guys who looked like he wouldn’t recognize a shower if he were standing in one. Over the summer, he’d been trying to grow a mustache; the result was still over his upper lip, even if it looked nothing like what he had been hoping for. “Haven’t seen you in forever. How’ve you been?” He stuck out his chin at an odd angle, as if trying to bring attention to his unfortunate almost-mustache.

Narvin managed a pained smile. “Hi, Torvald,” he said, wondering how rude he could be to his childhood best friend. He and Torvald were no longer best friends, indeed, Narvin didn’t know if they could even be considered friends. But he had  _ history _ with Torvald, he knew too many things about Narvin’s childhood for Narvin to be totally dismissive. “How was your summer?”

Torvald stuck his chin out even farther. “Kind of boring. Not much going on,” he said. “Got involved in some political stuff, y’know, nothing big. Girls like a man who cares about politics.” His expression said that that was the most important part of being in politics.

Narvin kept his pained smile in place, wondering how he could get out of this situation. “You, uh, managed to grow that mustache,” he said. “You look like an entirely different person.”

Torvald beamed.

Maybe school wouldn’t actually be a relief. Not if Torvald suddenly thought they were best friends again. Narvin couldn’t believe he had ever been friends with him, to be honest. Maybe it was just because his parents approved of so few kids at the elementary school, and they liked Torvald’s parents.

Or maybe it was because Narvin had always had hermit-like tendencies, and Torvald was the only person socially awkward enough to not pick up on that. Narvin walked away from Torvald, dodging away as Torvald tried to slap him on the shoulder, and continued on to class.

The rest of the day proved to Narvin that this year could be mindlessly tedious, which was just what he wanted, if only he could stay away from everyone. At lunch, he was joined by Irving Braxiatel, of all people, and from there, he was joined by Romana and her friend Leela, and then Leela’s boyfriend, Andred. All in all, not ideal.

“Narvin,” Brax said, sitting down directly across from him. “So antisocial?” His voice was careful, cultivated, and smooth. Narvin would never admit to it, but he wished he could have Brax’s voice, if only so that he could have a deep voice that could intimidate people. He tried, but his own voice was too nasally for intimidation. Much better for indignation.

“Leave me alone, Braxiatel,” Narvin said. He knew Brax’s friends usually called him Brax, and in Narvin’s head he was Brax, but he wasn’t about to go around insinuating that he was  _ friends _ with Irving Braxiatel.

“But it’s only day one!” Brax replied, a tiny bit of theatricality in his voice. Brax was like that; very theatrical. Narvin remembered eighth grade very well. He’d been Smee and hated every minute of it. “I know it must be difficult for you homeschooled kids, but usually we try not to avoid each other until a few months into the year. There hasn’t even been any significant drama yet for you to use as an excuse.”

Narvin groaned. He’d been homeschooled until sixth grade, and Brax never let him forget it. He seemed to enjoy annoying Narvin. “What do you want, exactly?” he asked. Like Torvald, Brax was a person he would be stupid to be rude to, but there was something about him that made Narvin feel violent. Perhaps it was the air of self-importance Brax carried with him at all times.

“Why, only to be your friend,” Brax declared, still theatrical, his tone full of  _ hurt, _ so much hurt that his hand went to his chest.

“Go to hell,” Narvin said, and took a bite of the almost-pizza the cafeteria was serving.

A ghost of a smile touched Brax’s lips, and Narvin wondered if Brax, too, was trying to grow a mustache. It certainly looked like it. “You say that like we’re not already there,” Brax replied, his hand making a grandiloquent sweeping gesture around the cafeteria.

Narvin swallowed his almost-pizza with the barest hint of a grimace. “I failed to realize that we’re apparently in a terrible, cliché movie high school,” he said. “You’re not allowed to sound that pretentious in real life.”

“I’m always this pretentious,” Brax said. “You should be used to it by now.”

Narvin decided it wasn’t worth it to remind Brax that they weren’t all that close, and that there was therefore no reason for Narvin to be used to anything Brax said or did. “Seriously though, Brax,” he said, almost immediately forgetting his deliberate attempt to stay formal and not-a-friend, “what do you want?”

“I have a tutoring job that I took without thinking,” Brax said. “Turns out, I might need someone else to take care of it for me. I think you’re smart enough to handle it.”

“Was that a compliment?” Narvin asked, half sarcastic and half genuinely surprised.

Brax sighed like a pining lover. “No, Narvin, it was a statement of fact. I thought you were mature enough to be able to see the difference.”

Narvin choked on his not-quite-pizza. He wanted to ask Brax if that was another compliment, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to muster the level of sarcasm that would require for Brax to not lecture him on maturity. For  _ Brax _ to lecture  _ him _ on maturity. The nerve.

Instead, he managed to force down the bite he’d choked on. “I’m not saying I’m agreeing to it,” he said, his eyes watering, “but who would it be, how often, and what subject?” He wiped at his eyes. “And how much will you be paying me to do this for you?”

Brax opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment, Romana and Leela walked up, trays of food in their hands. Brax leaned back, hands spread wide, as if about to give a hug, except there was a table in between him and both girls. “Romana!” he said, his voice suddenly Santa Claus levels of jovial. “Leela! I’ve barely seen you two today!”

“Oh, yes, you’ve  _ barely _ seen me today,” Romana said sarcastically. “Only two AP classes,  _ and _ I drove past you on the way to school and waved at you. Have you still not gotten your license?”

“Alright, so I’ve barely seen Leela today,” Brax conceded, ignoring her question. He bestowed an enigmatic smile on the pair, a smile that looked exactly like a less-toothy version of his little brother’s. “How are you, Leela? Still dating the cop wannabe?”

“You know that I am,” Leela replied, sitting down. Her accent was every bit as thick as it was last year. “Why must Narvin be here?” she added, shooting him a glare. There was no love lost between the two, between her ridiculous, uptight nature and difficulty understanding English, and Narvin’s general unwillingness to make friends.

“I’m afraid we’re intruding on him,” Brax said. “I thought he needed some friends.”

Leela snorted and shook her loose red hair back behind her shoulders. “Has Narvin changed that much over the summer?” she asked. “Last June he would not have thanked you for becoming friends with him.”

“I’m not sure he’s thanking me now, either,” Brax replied. He managed to keep a straight face, but Narvin could see the smile in his eyes. “But he will.” He turned to Romana. “Have you seen Darkel at all today?” he asked, and the conversation drifted to other topics, and Narvin was forgotten, even though  _ he _ could have told Brax about Darkel. No one ever suspected him of knowing anything gossip-worthy, which was why he knew so much. He watched them talking together, heads close, taking the whole matter of Darkel and gossip and high-school-scandal altogether way too seriously, and wondered if he’d be able to get Leela dress-coded again, or if she had actually learned anything from last year.

A quick look revealed that he  _ probably _ could, although it was close. Either Leela was getting better at finessing the dress code, or she was just dressing a bit more modestly. The ripped shorts looked like they probably reached her fingertips, but he might be able to get her on her top. Her skin, he realized, had tanned several shades darker than it usually was, contrasting oddly with her blue eyes and red hair. He wondered just how much time she spent outside over the summer.

And then Andred joined the table, and Narvin left, because he didn’t really care for Andred. He was an idiot jock, only tolerated by Romana and Brax because he was dating Leela, and they were fond of her, for whatever reason. He couldn’t see what was so special about her, other than her determination to break the school dress code as often as possible. He took one last glance back at the table before leaving the cafeteria. Brax and Romana were talking earnestly about something, and Andred’s arm was wrapped around Leela’s waist. Narvin watched them for a moment, then shook his head. “Disgusting,” he muttered, and walked out.

He was about to find somewhere quiet to sit and read a book or something when a short, brown-haired girl ran past him, almost knocking him over. Despite the heat, she was wearing a black bomber jacket, patches sewn all over it. (Not that Narvin could judge her: he was wearing a flannel, after all.)

“No running!” he called after her, and she skidded to a halt, turning around to face him.

“Oh yeah?” She had a wild grin, more than a little manic. “What are you, my mom?”

Narvin tried not to sigh. “You must be a freshman,” he said, his tone clipped. “They’re really strict about the running thing here.” That was a lie, sort of: the school didn’t really care, but Narvin did, and he  _ would _ get people in trouble if they disobeyed. He was the sort of person who memorized the rules and would cite them to the secretary if she rolled her eyes at his vigilance.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” the girl said. “I’ll make sure no one sees me run, then.” She turned to go.

“Wait,” Narvin said, and she turned back, looking a bit more annoyed. “What’s your name?”

“Why, so you can report me?”

That was actually exactly what Narvin was going to do, but he wasn’t about to tell this tiny freshman that. “No, I just don’t know you. It’s a small school. I like knowing who everyone is.”

The girl nodded, flashing him a smile. “Call me Ace,” she said, and gripped her jacket like she was gripping the lapels of a sport coat. 

“Is that your actual name?” Narvin asked.

“What’s it matter to you?” Ace asked. “I told you to call me Ace, so you had better damn well do it.” There was a flash of anger there, and Narvin made a mental note that this new girl, Ace, or whatever her _ real _ name was, had a temper.

He threw up his hands in a placating gesture. No use making enemies of a freshman on day one. “Alright,” he said. “Just an unusual name.” He looked her up and down. The freshman class looked weirdly young this year — probably because he was a junior now — but she looked especially young.

“You good?” Ace asked, blowing her hair out of her face. 

Narvin nodded. “Just be careful,” he said. “You know, running in the halls, skipping class, all that stuff. They’re  _ vigilant _ here.” He hoped she’d catch the threat.

Ace rolled her eyes with all the sass of a middle schooler. “Yeah, dad, thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.” She gave a lazy, mock salute. “Off to see if I can blow something up and make you disappointed in me,  _ sir!” _ She took off at a run down the hall.

“What —  _ no!” _ Narvin ran after her, but she was cackling and, as she ran, she raised one of her hands above her head and flipped him off. 

What a day.

Narvin spent the rest of his time trying to avoid anyone who might possibly want to talk to him. None of those people actually liked him, as evidenced by the fact that no one had even  _ tried _ to get together with him over the summer. He’d been reduced to finding out what was going on through all the private Snapchat stories people had thoughtlessly added him to. Mainly just Brax’s little brother running away. Thankfully. He’d have been a freshman this year, and Brax didn’t think he could handle Theta being in the same school as him.

He’d had a bad experience with Brax’s little brother. Worse than most of his experiences with other people, he meant. The seventh grade had had a field trip to a science center the same day as the third through sixth grades, and Theta had somehow managed to join the seventh grade group. And then lose the seventh grade group, only he’d managed to drag Narvin along with him that time, mostly because  _ someone _ had to make sure that  _ child _ didn’t do  _ something _ chaotic and/or destructive. Narvin didn’t like thinking about that day. It may or may not have ended with a ban from the science center.

He did a pretty good job trying to avoid everyone. He even managed to avoid Brax and his weird tutoring scheme, despite sharing classes with him. It meant he had to sit on the edge of a cluster of jocks, but Maxil, Andred, and Henzil just ignored him, so that was alright. He wanted to be ignored.

When leaving class, he stuck behind the jocks, too, knowing that Brax ignored them unless he wanted something. They continued talking and laughing about whatever, completely forgetting about Narvin. Which was alright. He didn’t want to talk about sports.

“...I’m just saying, your girlfriend would be good at hockey,” one of them, Henzil, was saying. “She’s terrifying. Probably could take on an entire hockey team and win.”

Andred laughed loudly at that. “I heard there was more to hockey than fighting,” he said, “and I don’t know if Leela could control herself on ice skates, you know?”

“True,” Henzil replied. He smirked. “But she’d be even scarier on skates. I mean, those are fucking  _ knives _ strapped to her feet. Doesn’t she do a martial arts thing?”

“Yeah,” Andred said, “But I don’t think she could do karate or jiu-jitsu or whatever it is on ice skates. She’d have to balance on one of the knives.”

“You don’t even know which martial arts thing she does?” Maxil cut in. 

Andred shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, she can always tell me.”

Henzil stopped. “Dude, do you really want to be a shitty boyfriend? Be nice to her. She’s fucking terrifying.”

“She won’t hurt me,” Andred said, and Narvin could hear the smirk in his voice. “I’m her loving boyfriend of two years, remember?”

Narvin dropped back, not wanting to listen to anymore of their conversation, his stomach tightening. He could feel his jaw stiffen, and he knew it would be sore later in the day. He didn’t like Leela, but at least he was upfront about it, and had been for two years now. The other boys continued on ahead, conversation turning to Hallan, a sophomore who ran in the same circles, who was apparently in the midst of personal drama.

He was almost grateful when Brax caught up to him, because then he could be distracted from Leela’s shitty boyfriend. Brax clapped him on the shoulder. He’d taken off his suit coat at some point to reveal a waistcoat — a fucking  _ waistcoat _ — and his dark hair looked like he’d messed it up at some point.

“What do you want, Braxiatel?” Narvin asked, not even bothering to say hi.

“Where are you going?” Brax asked, ignoring the question. 

Narvin groaned and shook Brax’s hand off his shoulder. “My locker,” he snapped. He continued walking, trying to set a fast pace, just to spite Brax, but Narvin held the disadvantage of being shorter.

“About the tutoring thing,” Brax said, easily keeping pace, “I just need you to tutor this one girl, help with her math homework. I know you’re good at geometry, and she needs the help.”

“Forgive me if I’m getting something wrong here,” Narvin retorted, voice dripping with sarcasm, “but didn’t  _ you _ agree to tutor her, whoever she is?”

Brax sighed, a little too dramatically. “I did,” he agreed, “but I’ll probably be gone for some of the year. Travelling abroad.”

Right. Stupid Brax and his stupid rich family and his stupid going abroad and his stupid brother who’d run away because he was stupid.

Narvin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not saying yes because I’m not an imbecile,” he said. “How much would you pay me to do this for you?”

“Well…” Brax considered, stroking his chin thoughtfully, like an evil villain might stroke his fake goatee. Only Brax’s chin was clean-shaven, because he couldn’t really grow facial hair, everyone knew that. He looked at Narvin. “You’re so crude, did you know that? Turning this into a matter of  _ money. _ Whatever happened to doing something out of the goodness of your heart?”

Narvin couldn't help it; he snorted. “Right, because  _ you _ are  _ so good _ and  _ nothing _ you ever do could  _ ever _ have some sort of ulterior motive.” He turned and jabbed Brax in the chest with his finger. “I know what you’re like, you little fucker. Don’t lecture me about altruism when you don’t even have a heart.”

A pained expression crossed Brax’s face. “Narvin, there are many words to describe me, but I don’t believe  _ little _ is one of them.” He stood there for a moment with an odd expression on his face, and then he winked, clapped his hand on Narvin’s shoulder again, and said, “But I had better let you get to class. I’ll give you the details for the tutoring thing later. Sound good?” He flashed a thumbs-up at Narvin and walked away, absentmindedly running a hand through his hair, before Narvin could protest  _ anything. _

Yeah. School sure was a relief. Definitely. For sure. Nothing exhausting or infuriating about it at all. Narvin wanted to bang his head into a locker, but if he stopped and did that, he’d probably end up late for class. He swore under his breath.

It wasn’t until after school that Brax successfully cornered him again. Narvin was going to walk home, and he’d even taken off his gray flannel so he wouldn’t sweat all over it, when Brax came strolling over, still in his waistcoat, suit coat slung over his shoulder. 

Narvin turned around so he wouldn’t have to look at Brax. Maybe he would be left alone. Maybe he could just go to the library in peace and work on his homework.

“Narvin!”

Or not.

He turned around, eyes still screwed up almost shut in the sunshine. “What do you  _ want,  _ Brax?” he asked.

“You know what I want.” Brax’s voice was deep, and if it had been anyone  _ other _ than Brax, Narvin would have suspected he was being hit on.

Narvin glared at him. “I’m not doing that stupid tutoring thing,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. When he wasn’t calm, his voice had a tendency to get squeaky.

Brax gave him one of his best enigmatic smiles. “I think you’ll find that you are,” he said, “since I’ve already texted the girl and explained the whole situation, and she’d be delighted to have you instead of me.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively at Narvin.

“Geometry?” Narvin asked, resigning himself to his fate and trying to ignore all of Brax’s double entendres, if that was in fact what Brax was doing.

“Yes,” Brax replied, looking smug. Narvin fought off the urge to smack him. He didn’t often feel the need to get physically violent, but the Lungbarrow brothers were particularly infuriating. “I’ll text you her address?”

“Fine.”  _ Now leave me alone. _

“Be there by 7:30 tonight,” Brax added. “That way you can… get to know the person you’ll be tutoring.” He raised his eyebrows again.

“What if you just  _ tell me _ who I’m fucking tutoring so that I can avoid as much awkwardness as possible?” Narvin asked. His voice was starting to get squeaky.

Brax gave him a look, one of those looks that only parents and weird, pretentious high school juniors can give. “Now Narvin,” he said, the smallest hint of a smile touching his lips. “Where would the fun be in that?”

_ Yeah, _ thought Narvin, as he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and set off for the library.  _ A great day. Great start to the school year. _

He hoped it was just first-day weirdness. It would all be fine. His phone buzzed, but he ignored it. Probably just Brax texting him this student’s address, whoever she was. He could check later. Didn’t want to open the text too quickly and make Brax think he actually cared, because he didn’t.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Torvald standing on the sidewalk, talking to Andred, of all people. He wondered what that was about, but decided he didn’t care. He was going to stay out of people’s drama this year, and that meant no more updating his Excel spreadsheet. Let Andred and Torvald do whatever. Let Darkel do whatever. Let that annoying little freshman who flipped him off do whatever. Let Leela do whatever. Let Brax do whatever.

Well. Maybe not let Brax do whatever. Narvin didn’t want to be roped into tutoring anyone else.

And actually, he didn’t know if he’d be able to live with himself if he didn’t hall monitor the living shit out of everyone. If he was unpleasant enough, he wouldn’t have people trying to become his friend. And then he wouldn’t have to watch out for Torvald or Brax or anyone else who’d suddenly decided that this was the year to make Narvin get some friends.

He checked his phone, and, sure enough, Brax had texted him the address of whoever he was supposed to be tutoring. He sighed and put it back in his pocket.

He wondered how he was going to explain this to his parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m terrified of writing anything that takes place during school hours


	3. An (un)Pleasant Surprise

Leela was stretching on the floor of her bedroom, listening to music and studiously ignoring the pile of homework she’d already been assigned when the doorbell rang.

She waited a moment before going to answer the door. Let whoever was out there wait a bit longer. She was still annoyed at Brax for finding someone else to tutor her. He’d sprung it on her last-minute, right before she was about to leave with Andred, assuring her that he’d found someone else who was entirely capable and _very_ good at geometry, and of course, she’d gone along with it. What else was she supposed to do when Brax started talking? He used so many words that she did not understand that she felt like she had no choice but to agree with him.

When she finally went to the door to open it, whoever was outside had rung the doorbell at least twice more. Apparently, they were impatient.

K9 was waiting eagerly for the stranger to get inside, his mouth open, tongue out. He was prancing in place, tail wagging so hard Leela was worried he’d knock something over.

“Down, K9,” Leela said, and grabbed his collar when he didn’t comply, too eager at the thought of making friends with someone.

She opened the front door, wondering who it would be — she trusted Brax enough to be certain that it wouldn’t be someone like Darkel, but she couldn’t figure out who it might be. Most of the school ignored her, and the ones who were good at this sort of thing were the kinds of people who hung out in Romana’s and Brax’s social circle: Darkel, Trave, Livia, Matthias.

She was a little shocked to see Narvin standing in front of her, looking supremely uncomfortable, hands shoved awkwardly into the pockets of his dark jeans, the flannel he’d been wearing at school tied around his waist in the heat of the day, backpack on his back. He saw her, and his eyes widened in surprise and the altogether more familiar look of annoyance. Leela didn’t think Narvin outright _hated_ her, at least, not more so than anyone else. She just thought he hated everything _about_ her.

“No,” said Leela, and shut the door in his face, before he could even get a word out. She found her phone and sent a few texts Brax’s way, letting him know _exactly_ what she thought of his idea of a replacement tutor.

She hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter and sat, dangling her legs in the air. She wondered if Narvin would stay there and wait for her to let him in, or if he would leave. She hoped it would be the latter.

A few moments later, her phone rang. She slid off the counter and answered it, and began pacing around the room. She didn’t like making phone calls, but it was Brax. And she needed explanations.

“Brax!” she exclaimed, hoping her annoyance and, indeed, anger would carry over the phone.

There was a momentary pause at the other end of the phone. Maybe Brax was trying to decide what to say. He had a tendency to take long pauses before he spoke, and then sound like he had rehearsed an entire speech.

Instead of a speech, he simply said, “Have you let Narvin in yet?” He didn’t _sound_ annoyed or worried or repentant. He sounded like he was enjoying himself. Enjoying himself a lot. She wondered if it would be acceptable to hang up on him and spend the rest of the evening in her room, trying to puzzle out geometry by herself, ignoring Narvin and Brax and letting them go to hell.

No, that probably wouldn’t work. So she replied, making sure her voice was as venomous as possible. “No,” she said, “and I am not going to.” She paused, wondering how Brax could possibly be enjoying himself with this. He _knew_ how much Narvin and Leela hated each other. He _knew_ their animosity and Narvin’s tendency to dress code her all the time, and his offhand remarks about her intelligence, or lack thereof. “I trusted you to help me, Brax,” she finally said.

“And that’s my fault somehow?” Brax responded, sounding indignant. “No one in their right mind would actually trust me, you know.” He paused, and Leela could hear his breathing, just a little bit, over the phone. “You should let Narvin in,” he said. “I convinced him to help you, and you’ll thank me when I end up being abroad half the year.” All throughout, there was that insufferability, that general smugness that Leela usually didn’t hear, or else usually ignored. It hadn’t really bothered her before; after all, it had never been directed at her. And now she understood _exactly_ why so many people were annoyed by Brax.

But she was going to ignore it. For now. She might threaten to kick his teeth in the next time she saw him, but that was it. “How did you convince Narvin to help me?” she asked, because that _was_ the next question. Brax wouldn’t have been able to convince Leela to ask Narvin to tutor her, no matter his abilities in _geometry._ And Leela knew from experience that Narvin hated her. “He does not like me any more than I like him.”

Apparently, Brax’s ways of convincing Narvin to take his place had involved being secretive and keeping the identity of the student being tutored a secret. Which would have explained Narvin’s shocked (and horrified) expression upon her opening the door. Leela supposed she couldn’t expect anything different from Brax; he was very good at pulling shit like that. He had the entire time she’d known him. (It was strange; he was scarily similar to his little brother in so many ways, from his smile to the way he waved hello, but in so many other ways he was almost scarily different. Leela couldn’t ever imagine Theta manipulating everyone around him.)

Brax was being weird, though. He was acting paranoid, like he thought high school would devolve into some kind of civil war, and Narvin being an annoying little monster creature would be helpful in the upcoming battles.

But that was silly. This was school, not some kind of divided war-torn country, and Narvin was a jerk, not some kind of _asset._

She waited a few more minutes before going back to let Narvin in. Just for good measure.

Leela was both surprised and disappointed when she opened the door again, as Brax had instructed, and found that Narvin was still outside waiting for her. His phone was out of his pocket now, in his hand, and he was staring at it with something that looked a lot like rage. Maybe Brax had been in touch with him, too, and that was why she was going to have to suffer through this.

When Leela had been hoping for anyone other than Darkel, she hadn’t thought for a moment to include _Narvin_ in that statement. She forgot about him more often than not, except for when he was dress coding her (because it would be _so_ terrible for her to show her shoulders at school, or her midriff, or wear shorts that didn’t meet her fingertips.) He seemed to exist just as an entity that was there to annoy her. Make her life that little bit more miserable.

It would be easier if he singled her out for rude treatment. Then she could say that Narvin was being xenophobic, at least. But he was like this with everyone. He was just weirdly anal about everything everyone did. He didn’t have his nose in anyone’s business, but he seemed to know everyone’s business. Leela half-expected to find out one of these days that he employed a spy ring throughout the school, but for him to be able to do that, he’d have to actually have friends. Or at least have people who didn’t hate him, and Leela didn’t think she could name a single person in the entire school who didn’t hate him at least a little bit.

Leela let out a sigh that was more a groan of annoyance than anything else. “You may come in,” she said, wondering if she should let go of K9’s collar, just so that he could jump on top of Narvin and lick him incessantly.

Gingerly, Narvin stepped inside, looking around him as if looking for something to criticize. He probably _was_ looking for something to criticize, Leela decided. Knowing Narvin, he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to mock her for something random and stupid that only he cared about. Like air freshener or something.

Instead, though, his eyes came to rest on the dog, and Leela was pleased to see Narvin take a step back, looking worried. Afraid, even. Was Narvin afraid of dogs? Leela didn’t have him marked as much of an animal person — Narvin was the sort of person who took cleanliness to its extreme, and Leela couldn’t see him ever willingly touching an animal — but she thought it was more from his extreme aversion to anything living, not fear.

“K9, down,” Leela commanded, deciding to be nice, just this once, just because Brax had asked her to and she felt like she owed it to him somehow. She wasn’t quite sure how Brax had that effect on people, but he did. K9 finally listened, and slunk off to find a toy, tail between his legs. It cast one final, mournful look at Narvin, and then at Leela, and it was gone.

Narvin carefully shut the door behind him. “Did you call that dog _K9?”_ he asked, sounding incredulous. To his credit, he no longer looked afraid, and was instead doing his very best to look judgmental. Oh. He’d probably decided to focus on her dog as his subject of ridicule.

“Yes,” Leela replied sharply. “Why?”

He let out a huff of breath that might have been a laugh, if Leela were not utterly convinced that Narvin didn’t know how to laugh. He was the most joyless teenager she had ever met. Like a middle-aged, balding accountant going through a divorce, except Narvin wasn’t balding. Still, that didn’t matter. It was more of a vibe than anything else. Narvin’s vibe was middle-aged, balding accountant. Probably going through a divorce and a midlife crisis. All before graduating high school.

“That,” Narvin said, “is quite possibly the stupidest name for a dog in the history of dog names.”

Leela rolled her eyes, and that immediately made her feel like she was copying Romana. “It’s funny,” she said, glaring at him, “but I do not remember asking for your thoughts.”

“No,” Narvin said, readily agreeing. “But I’m giving them to you anyway. Free of charge.” He returned the glare, but when he spoke, it was dripping with a slimy pleasantry, just over-the-top enough to let Leela know he was being sarcastic. “Doesn’t that make you feel special?”

Would it be bad manners if she punched Narvin and then made him leave? Aside from Narvin making her life more miserable, and the way Brax had spoken it had sounded like estranging Narvin would ruin his life, too, and the fact that Leela didn’t want to get in more trouble than she _absolutely_ had to. (Which meant she got in trouble quite a lot, in fact. She was always being told to pick her battles. No one seemed to realize that she did, in fact, do that, because her parents thought it meant she would get into fewer fights, and Leela was always getting in trouble for starting fights. What Leela wanted to point out was that she may have always thrown the first punches, but she never initiated anything.)

Instead of punching him, she gave him her best withering glare. “You are supposed to be _tutoring_ me,” she said, making sure her tone conveyed _exactly_ how disgusted she was with the arrangement. “Not mocking me or my dog.”

“But you would be suspicious if I showed up and was nice to you,” Narvin replied, his voice still slimy. “We couldn’t have you being _suspicious,_ could we?” His face was flushed, and he looked slightly panicked, and Leela wondered why. His voice wasn’t displaying any signs of being panicked or upset, but she wondered if maybe he was being rude because he was worried about something.

But that would be silly. Narvin was always rude, he couldn’t possibly always be worried about something.

“I would like you to _tutor_ me,” Leela said, enunciating the word _tutor_ as much as she could, even though she didn’t want that at all, what she really would like was for Brax to tutor her, not some uptight high schooler who wore _flannels_ in summer heat. “Are you going to do that, or are you going to insult me?”

Narvin let out a heavy sigh, like he was making a great sacrifice. “Fine,” he said, his voice sounding just a little bit too deflated to be snappish. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Come on, then,” Leela said, and walked away. She beckoned for him to follow with her hand.

“Where are we going?” Narvin asked. He sounded nervous. Worried. Scared, even. Like he thought Leela was going to take him somewhere secluded and murder him.

She groaned and tried not to roll her eyes, because it felt too much like she was imitating Romana when she did that. “We are going to my room?” she said, her voice rising like she was asking a question. “That is where I do my homework, and that way I can keep K9 out. Since you are scared of him.” 

She cast a backwards glance at Narvin. His face was tomato-red, his eyes wide, almost bugging out of their sockets, and his mouth was opening and closing like a fish.

“Your _room?”_ he finally gasped, his voice rising several octaves, ending in a squeak that was almost comical. The way he said it made it clear that he was horrified by the very idea. To Leela’s surprise, he actually looked terrified, like she was going to take him to her lair and seduce him, or maybe murder him. The second option was the one she was thinking about. It was probably a good thing, then, if he was terrified of her. It would make studying easier, hopefully.

Narvin followed her up the stairs, half-finished stammering protests streaming from his lips, his face bright red, voice still squeaking. Leela didn’t think she’d ever seen him like this before. His annoying, snarky, slimy (Leela didn’t know the word _supercilious,_ but if she had, she would have used it only in regards to Narvin) normal self had vanished almost entirely, leaving in its place this weird, nervous, embarrassed teenager. In that moment, it was made perfectly obvious that Narvin had never even been _friends_ with a girl before.

Narvin’s eyes darted around her room as he stepped inside, like he was worried she’d tie him up and leave him there. He was almost totally speechless, except for the occasional stammer, but he didn’t seem to be able to get a full word out, much less a sentence.

“When you have untied the knot in your tongue, we can start with this stupid geometry homework,” Leela said, wondering if maybe there was something wrong with Narvin that she didn’t know about.

He closed his mouth and visibly swallowed, then coughed once, nervously. “I–” He cut himself off, voice still squeaky, and then he coughed again. “Of course,” he said, his voice in its normal register, eyes still darting around the room, taking in the sports trophies and clutter at the edges. Probably judging it, if he could get over the shock of being in a _girl’s_ room. “Can we — can we keep the door open, at least?”

Leela groaned and flopped down on her bed. “Narvin, I do not wish to _seduce_ you! I already have a boyfriend, and even if I did not, I would not wish for it to be you!”

“I understand that,” Narvin said, sounding so stiff that Leela wondered if he had a literal stick up his ass, not just a metaphorical one. “But it’s the thought behind it that counts, I find.” He muttered something else under his breath. Leela thought she heard the word, “parents.”

She sat up and shrugged. “It is your choice,” she said. “You can shut the door and be in the bedroom of a girl you hate, teaching her geometry but with the door closed, or you can leave the door open and K9 can come and go as he pleases.”

Narvin opened his mouth, then shut it again. He moved over to the door and wordlessly shut it. Leela flopped back down on her bed, wondering just how long this would take. She wanted to call Romana as soon as possible and complain about Narvin, since Romana was a good friend and would sympathize with her. She’d probably ask how Leela ended up with _Narvin,_ of all people, and then she’d explain that it was Brax being a dick, and then Romana would be very put out with Brax for about four days, and they would be the most miserable four days of Brax’s life. Just because he was that in love with Romana.

Meanwhile, Narvin was looking around her room, and she finally figured out why. He wasn’t judging her room, or maybe he was, but that wasn’t his primary reason for continuing to stare. He was looking for something, apparently. His arms were crossed in front of him, like he was hugging himself, and he looked acutely uncomfortable. For once in his life, he looked like a teenager, and not like the middle-aged, balding accountant that his soul longed to be.

“Did you lose something?” she asked, not because she particularly cared, but because if she was polite to him, then maybe they’d be able to get on with this without wasting too much time or murdering each other. 

He shook his head, his gray eyes so wide that he looked almost bug-eyed. “No — no,” he said. “Just… table? For school things? To study?” He looked around the room again. “Or even a desk?” His voice was starting to get squeaky again, and he coughed.

Leela sighed. “There is the floor or my bed,” she replied. “That is where I always do my homework. When I remember to do it,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“Of course you do,” she heard Narvin mutter. He clearly meant it in an insulting way, but she couldn’t figure out how it was an insult, so she let it slide. He sat down on the floor gingerly, legs crossed, and dropped the backpack off his back. He looked up at her, where she was still perched on the edge of her bed. “You’re in geometry?” he asked, and Leela was surprised to hear very little malice in his voice.

“Yes,” she said, and got up with a groan to get out her own things.

Geometry progressed slowly, because Leela really didn’t understand much of what had been talked about in class that day, and the teacher didn’t have time to go over it with the one foreign girl who had just barely gotten into a regular English class and still struggled a lot with language.

It wasn’t necessarily the _concepts_ of geometry that Leela was struggling with so much as it was the language. The teacher had been using terms without explaining them, and when he _had_ explained them, it hadn’t been very well. Perhaps the concepts would bother her later, but it was day one. It wasn’t like they were covering anything all that difficult.

“So,” said Narvin, who had just finished painstakingly drawing out two triangles to the same dimensions, “these triangles are…?” He sounded annoyed, but that was normal for him.

“They are alike,” Leela replied.

“...And the word for that is…?”

“The only word I know is alike!” Leela snapped. “You cannot expect me to know some stupid word that is only needed for this class, that is foolish.”

Narvin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright, then, fail your class. Then we can talk.”

“I do not wish to talk to you,” Leela replied coldly.

“And you think I want to talk to you?” Narvin shot back. “You think I want to spend _time_ with you? Teach you things that literally everyone knows, but you don’t because you’re just–” He broke off before he could finish his sentence, but the unspoken words hung heavy in the air between them.

“Then maybe you should not,” Leela finally said, turning her nose up as best she could. “If even being in my presence sickens you this much, maybe you should go and spend time with your friends.” She paused. “Oh, wait.” She looked at him pityingly. “I forgot. You do not have any.”

To his credit, Narvin didn’t betray any emotions her words might have inspired. Leela’s only clue that he had even heard her was the slightest tightening at the corners of his mouth, like he was gritting his teeth or, at the very least, holding his jaw as tightly as possible to distract himself. A long silence passed like that, uncomfortable.

Finally, Narvin cleared his throat. Without looking at Leela, he said, “Now that you’ve gotten that off your chest, maybe we should actually get to work. And after this, you never have to see me again.”

So he wasn’t going to just leave. Maybe Brax was paying him. Or blackmailing him. She could imagine Brax doing something like that. He was a dick, but he was _their_ dick; hers and Romana’s. Or maybe Narvin was just a weird perfectionist or completionist or some other type of _-ist_ that no high schooler in their right mind would want to be associated with.

Instead of giving him a proper reply, she snorted. “I shall still have to see you, Narvin,” she said. “We both go to the same school, do we not? Or are you moving?” She knew she was being deliberately difficult now, but this was Narvin. His entire personality was difficult. She couldn't be blamed for retaliating a little bit.

“Oh, shut up,” Narvin said. He sounded tired. “Even I know you're not _that_ stupid.” He points to the triangles. “These are congruent. Got that?”

She rolled her eyes, and immediately felt like she was channeling the spirit of Romana. “You tell me these things, but so did Mr. Borusa. It means nothing to me.”

Narvin let out a half-sigh, half-groan. More of a huff of annoyed air than anything else. He pinched the bridge of his nose again. He seemed to do that an awful lot. “Borusa isn’t a _bad_ teacher, Leela, you’re just bad at math.”

“I am not bad at math, I am bad at English,” Leela exclaimed, glaring at him. “I know that my accent is bad and my words clumsy. When I do not understand a word that I must know, the best way for me to learn is for you to teach me what the word means.”

He put his head in his hands. “That’s Borusa’s job, not mine.”

“But Borusa is not explaining it either!” Now she was really angry, angry enough that she could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She was being made to look stupid in front of this boy, who already hated her, and now he would make fun of her at school for being an idiot and foolish, and she had few enough friends as it was. This whole town was xenophobic and rude to her, and now Brax had stuck one of those jerks in her house, in her _bedroom,_ to sneer at her as she struggled with school.

“Fine.” Narvin sounded annoyed, now, although he still wasn’t looking at her. He pointed at the triangles again. “These triangles are congruent. That means that they’re identical.”

She blinked. “But that is what I said before,” she said, and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“No, it isn’t.” Narvin glanced at her, just barely. “You said they’re alike. They’re congruent.”

“But you said that means alike!”

“It…does,” he conceded, looking at his hands. “But when we’re talking about geometry, we say congruent.”

“That makes no sense.”

He offered a tight smile, one that looked almost like a grimace. “Neither does anything you say. Shall we continue?”

Yes, Leela decided, as he turned the page in her textbook.

She decided she was probably going to kill him.


	4. It’s a Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> readers can have a little Brax POV. As a treat.

Brax was at the Panopticon, a local coffee shop, with Romana when his phone began to go off almost incessantly.

He tried to ignore it, for a few minutes, at least. He couldn’t say he hadn’t been expecting it, of course, because that would have been a lie. But he did rather hope he could make something out of his and Romana’s study date-that-wasn’t-a-date before he had to be called in to convince Narvin and Leela to play nice.

The study date-that-wasn’t-a-date had been his idea, although he’d just called it a study date. Romana had added that other little caveat, much to Brax’s disappointment. But it still meant getting to hang out with Romana by himself, so he’d be okay with it. Even if it meant studying for AP Calculus.

Besides, if Romana saw how intelligent he was, she might be okay with dropping the “not-a-date” from their study date. He ignored the fact that she already knew how smart he was, based on the fact that they’d been friends for years, and their grades were always nearly identical. He could just imagine her suddenly looking up at him in a way she’d never looked at him before and saying, “Why, Brax, you’re incredible,” and he’d take her hands in his and say, “I know,” and then he’d pay for her coffee, and they’d go take a walk through downtown Gallifrey, and they’d hold hands. Maybe they’d bump into Narvin and Leela, too, and they’d be holding hands, and it would be a double date. They’d all take a lovely walk, holding hands, all would be well, and then he’d kiss Romana and Leela would kiss Narvin. It would be perfect.

No, wait, that wasn’t right, because Narvin and Leela hated each other, and anyway, Leela was dating Andred, the useless jock. This year’s captain of the football team, unless Brax was very much mistaken. Brax frowned, wondering if he’d meant Andred and his brain was just thinking  _ Narvin _ because his phone was still buzzing. 

It didn’t matter either way. It was his daydream, after all.

“Brax!”

He jumped, and then berated himself for jumping, because it made him look foolish. His eyes focused on Romana, who was sitting across the table from him, her blonde hair cascading down her shoulders like a golden waterfall, her blue eyes dark like a stormy sea, her skin clear as–

“Are you even paying attention?”

He gave himself a mental shake. No time to daydream right now, he could do that at home, or maybe he could just turn his inner turmoil into prose. He was good at doing that, he liked to think. “Sorry,” he said, flashing her what he knew was his most charming grin. “I just got lost in my thoughts for a moment. How peculiar.”

Romana rolled her eyes. “Do you have to work that hard at being weird, or does it come naturally?” she asked, but there was a hint of a sardonic grin on her face, so Brax decided he wouldn’t get offended.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t pretend, though.

“You wound me with your harsh words, Romana,” he said, clasping his hand over his heart. “I can’t believe you’d say such things about your own friend.”

That made her actually laugh out loud, so Brax considered it a job well done. He liked listening to her laugh, and she didn’t do it often. She was generally annoyed or serious, or some combination of the two.

“Come on,” said Romana, after she had stopped laughing. The smile lingered on her face, lighting it up, and Brax almost let out a heartfelt, dreamy sigh. “Let’s get this done. I know I say this every year, but I can’t believe they gave us homework on the first day.”

“And I know I say this every year, but would you expect anything less from this school?” Brax replied. This would be the point where he would stroke his mustache, but his face was being very resistant to the idea of facial hair. It was very annoying. He just wanted to look like a vaguely Edwardian businessman, except in slightly more modern clothes. 

He remembered his phone, then, realizing that it hadn’t buzzed since Romana had made fun of him. He took it out of his pocket and checked it, and couldn’t help but grin, in a way that he was  _ sure _ made him look like the Cheshire Cat.

Romana looked at him warily. “What happened?” she asked, sounding worried.

“Oh, nothing,” Brax said. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to make a few phone calls.” He got up and walked away, wondering if Romana was curious about what he was doing. He liked being enigmatic and cryptic, found that it made people feel a little bit more intimidated by him.

When he got somewhere a bit quieter (and a bit more private, because he couldn’t just have people know that his important secretive business was as stupid as this), he called Leela.

“Brax!” she said, as soon as she picked up. She sounded annoyed. Or perhaps angry.

“Have you let Narvin in yet?” Brax asked, not even bothering to say hello. He knew she’d be annoyed if he did. She’d say that he was trying to change the subject, or perhaps that he was stalling. Something like that.

“No.” Leela’s anger was clear even through the phone. Brax was glad he was a few miles away. He wasn’t afraid of Leela, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be on the direct receiving end of her anger, especially not if they were in the same room. “And I am not going to,” she continued. “I trusted you to help me, Brax.”

“Is that my fault somehow?” Brax protested. “No one in their right mind would actually trust me, you know.” He paused. “You should let Narvin in,” he said. “I convinced him to help you, and you’ll thank me when I end up being abroad half the year.”

“How did you convince Narvin to help me?” He does not like me any more than I like him.”

“Well,” Brax said, stretching the vowel out, “I didn’t really say who he would be helping. Rather like I didn’t tell you who I’d found as a replacement. This whole situation is an exercise in me being evil.” He sighed. “Look, I think it would be a good idea to try and get Narvin on our side, before Darkel gets him on hers. He knows too much.”

“What does that mean?” Leela was asking, but Brax had already hung up.

_ Leela will let you in soon, _ he texted Narvin.  _ I imagine you’re still waiting for her. _ He scrolled up through the messages he’d been receiving from Narvin, smirking all the while. He’d gotten  _ so worked up _ about the whole thing. He’d even foregone his normally-perfect grammar (in  _ texting, _ Brax always felt the need to add) in favor of capslock and way too many question marks and exclamation points. The whole thing had made Narvin’s texts read more like a teenager’s texts and less like an uptight parent.

Actually, now that Brax had thought about it,  _ uptight parent _ was the perfect way to describe Narvin. Not that Narvin had any kids. He couldn’t imagine Narvin around kids, but now that he’d thought of that, he almost wanted to see it. If he ever met any kids who were real brats, he’d have to try and find a way to make Narvin interact with them. Shame Theta had run away, he reflected. He would have been perfect for something like this.

Brax had a… complicated relationship with his little brother. Theta was the smartest numbskull Brax had ever met. An unenviable position, Brax thought. He’d much rather be an intelligent criminal, or perhaps just an intelligent-yet-terrifying eldritch being. Not that he was any of those things, although Brax had, just for fun, plotted out exactly how he’d rob an art museum. Not that he would, of course. He was too worried about being tried as an adult if he got caught. (But what a way to go, he thought. Stealing priceless paintings would be possibly the classiest way Brax could ever get a jail sentence.)

For the most part, Brax ignored Theta, and Theta ignored him. They didn’t look terribly alike, except for the intelligent eyes and the disconcerting smile, and they often tried to forget that they were related. Bumping into each other at home was perhaps the only fun part of this arrangement, as they could either totally ignore each other or say,  _ “You!” _ in increasingly theatrical, scandalized voices, like the other was an evil villain in a bad movie. Other than that, though, the situation was dire indeed. Brax was lucky that his little brother didn’t take after him too much; at least, he didn’t have much of a tendency to blackmail people. He’d certainly have enough to tell people about Brax, especially their parents. But Theta liked to pretend at being morally upright. It wouldn’t occur to him to blackmail  _ anyone, _ not even his much-detested older brother.

Now that Theta had run away with his morally-questionable boyfriend, Brax had the house to himself. Well. Himself and his cat. And his parents, but his parents were away more often than not, usually on the other side of the world. When Brax and Theta had been small, they would often accompany their parents, but now that they were teenagers, the Lungbarrow parents trusted their children enough to leave them in charge of the house while they were gone on business trips.

Brax didn’t take advantage of that at all. Never. Of course not. He was a good, responsible son who would never  _ dream _ of taking advantage of his parents’ near constant absence by throwing parties at his huge, mansion-like home. And the fact that his annoying little brother had now run off and was living like a king somewhere on the other side of the world certainly ensured that Brax would  _ never _ do something irresponsible like throw huge parties. Why, the very idea.

He grinned at his phone for a moment, relishing the idea of forcing Narvin and Leela to work together, then went back to Romana, who was probably going to be annoyed that he’d left. She did like attention, even if she didn’t seem to want anything to do with him romantically.

True enough, she gave him a glare with just enough of a pout to show that she wasn’t seriously angry with him. He sat down, and then realized that he really should have gone and gotten another coffee, because he was thirsty and Romana’s frappuccino looked incredible, and he’d drained the last of his right before calling Leela.

“I thought you weren’t busy,” Romana said. She was too young to scold people, but it sounded an awful lot like scolding. With maybe a hint of sarcasm. This was Romana, though, she was usually at least a little sarcastic.

Brax shrugged and spread his hands wide. “I wasn’t intending on making this call, but I had urgent business.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“Ah. So I am.” Brax looked down at his notebook, then picked up his highlighter and began fiddling with it. “Are you implying that sixteen-year-olds cannot have urgent business?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m saying that it’s highly unusual.”

“And you’ll find that I am a highly unusual sixteen-year-old,” Brax replied, doing his best to sound enigmatic and mysterious and perhaps a tad bit pretentious. It really wasn’t a good sentence for that aura, but it was too late to change it now.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Fine, then. Don’t tell me.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” He couldn’t keep the grin off his face, but he managed to keep it small. She grinned back, still a little sarcastic, but it was the sort of sarcastic veneer she frequently had, the one she used because she’d decided that she couldn’t let people know that she actually had feelings.

Brax picked up his pencil, picked at the eraser, then set it back down. This was the time. He’d ask her to homecoming. It would be incredibly romantic. This would be the perfect time. He opened his mouth.

But Romana was distracted, looking past him, somewhere behind him. Towards the doors. She was chewing on her lip, which she didn’t ever do unless she was completely and totally distracted.

“What’s going on?” Brax asked, but she didn’t hear him. Her hair was falling in front of her face, and she brushed it back impatiently. He tried again. “Romana?”

She looked at him.

“What’s going on?” He didn’t look behind him, he knew that would be foolish, and make him look foolish, especially if it was someone he didn’t want to see.

“Don’t look now,” she replied, leaning in close enough that Brax could smell a hint of perfume, “but Darkel’s just walked in.”

Brax raised his eyebrows and stroked at his upper lip, where his mustache should have been, if he were only able to grow a mustache. He very casually got up, picking up his empty coffee cup. “I think I’ll just throw this away,” he said, and Romana rolled her eyes at him.

As he got up, he scanned the room, trying not to make it too obvious that he was looking for Darkel. The Panopticon was unlike a lot of other coffee shops in that it was big and spacious. The seating area was large and mostly circular and bright, not claustrophobic like the town Starbucks, and the Panopticon usually played classical music. It was an aesthetic Brax could get behind, and even if most people in town didn’t go in for the vibe the coffee shop was going for, it was a popular staple of the town. The people in Gallifrey preferred the Panopticon to Starbucks, if only because the coffee tasted better.

Sure enough, there was Darkel, at the end of the line of customers, waiting to place her order. Probably black coffee sweetened with the souls of the damned, Brax thought, throwing his coffee cup away and making his way back to Romana. Darkel was the Regina George of the school, which annoyed Brax, because he felt that that should be  _ his _ position. It was a role that came to him naturally, even if he  _ was _ a boy. She was a tall girl with dark hair and high cheekbones in a round face. Her skin was pale, but a good-looking pale, not the sort of, “Sunlight? What’s that?” thing that Narvin always appeared to be suffering from. As Braxiatel glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, he could see her texting, looking supremely bored. It was probably an act, Brax thought. Darkel liked to seem bored and unconcerned about everything, but she was actually  _ very _ concerned about the most minute details in anyone and everyone’s lives. There were two others with her, Brax could see: a freshman boy, rather short, very babyfaced, but incredibly skinny, with freckles and floppy hair and a nervous expression; and another dark-haired girl, shorter than Darkel, but prettier than her, with chiseled, pointed features and impressive makeup. She had an imperious look on her face that reminded Brax a little of Romana.

“She has friends with her,” Brax muttered to Romana as he slipped back into his seat.

Romana rolled her eyes. “Does Darkel have  _ friends?” _ The way she said it made it clear that she was being rhetorical, but Brax decided to answer anyway, because he was nice like that.

“Probably not,” he said, wondering approximately how cool he would look if he took Romana’s frappuccino and took a sip from it as he spoke. He performed a complex cost-benefit analysis in his head, and he decided that the risk of Romana getting mad at him was too great, so he settled for looking at her frappuccino longingly.

She rolled her stormy blue eyes, and Brax decided that she was very cute when she did that, even though most people he knew had stopped rolling their eyes sometime in middle school. She took a noisy sip of her drink and casually glanced at Darkel and her crew from where they were standing, somewhere behind Brax and totally out of his line of vision. “Do you know who the girl is?” she asked, still keeping her voice low.

“Unfortunately, no,” Brax replied, running a hand through his hair distractedly. “I saw her in Econ, and a few times in the halls, but I don’t recognize her, and I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself.” He inspected his nails; as usual, there wasn’t a speck of dirt underneath them. “I would have, normally, you know,” he added. “She seems… interesting. Do you know the boy who’s with them?”

Romana nodded and turned a page in her textbook. “He lives near me,” she replied. “His name is Wynter, he’s a freshman.”

“And does he seem the sort to usually… fraternize with Darkel?” Brax asked. He really wished he hadn’t thrown away his coffee cup, because he needed to do something with his hands, and he didn’t have a mustache to stroke, and he didn’t want to mess up his hair too badly, and there wasn’t any dirt that he could pick out from under his fingernails.

A thoughtful expression crossed Romana’s face and she tapped her long fingernails on the table. She set down her pencil and glanced over Brax’s shoulder at the trio. “You know,” she said slowly, “I wouldn’t have expected that from him. Wynter is a bit like a puppy. He and I have always gotten along alright. Apparently, he was bullied a bit in middle school, and since I didn’t bully him, he decided I was okay.” She sighed and picked up her pencil again, fiddling with the eraser. “I wouldn’t have bullied him in school, of course, but he didn’t really grasp the concept that I’m his neighbor and the rules are different for neighbors. You’re friendly with them even if you aren't the best of friends at school.”

“You’d think Darkel wouldn’t have an interest in him,” Brax murmured.

Romana rolled her eyes. “She probably doesn’t,” she said. “Wynter is brilliant academically, but he’s a wimp in literally every other area of his life. I don’t know what Darkel could even use him for.” She drained the rest of her frappuccino noisily and leaned in to Brax. “Do you feel like talking to Darkel?”

Brax sighed, with as much drama as he could muster. “I’m rather curious about her friends, otherwise I would say no. Why?”

“She’s walking over here,” Romana replied, straightening back up.

As if on cue, Darkel walked into Brax’s view. Her dark hair was back in a French braid and her makeup was flawless, as usual. Her manicured nails were bright red and very long, reminding Brax almost of claws. She smiled brightly, fake friendliness. “Fancy seeing you two here,” she said. 

“Oh, yes, what a  _ great  _ surprise,” Romana said, the sarcasm suddenly dialed up to eleven. “Because Brax and I  _ never _ come here.” She rolled her eyes and flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder.

“I only wanted to say hello,” Darkel replied, sniffing. “I wanted to make sure there are no hard feelings from last year, Romana.” She grinned, and Brax half-expected to see pointed teeth. “After I beat you so horribly in that final debate.”

“Wasn’t it later discovered that you were using your watch to cheat?” Romana asked, her voice suddenly innocent. “Looking up statistics that you hadn’t bothered to learn, or something like that?”

The smile vanished from Darkel’s face. “There were no  _ rules _ banning the use of a smartwatch,” she replied, venom eking out of her voice.

“Probably because the rules were written in 1973,” Romana countered. “You know, before smartwatches were invented?” She rolled her eyes again. “You should probably shut your mouth, by the way,” she added, “before you say something even more stupid.”

Brax felt the corners of his mouth twitch into a small grin, and was about to add a similarly biting remark when Darkel was joined by the other girl, the pretty one. She held herself like she was royalty, and despite being shorter than Darkel, she managed to project an air of tallness.

“Who are your friends?” the girl asked, her English accented.

Darkel gave a simpering smile. “Oh, I wouldn’t necessarily call them  _ friends,” _ she replied. “But if you want to meet them, this is Romana, and this is Brax.” She gestured to the two of them.

“Ah, Darkel,” Brax interjected. “Only my friends can call me Brax. You are, by your own admission, no friend of mine, and therefore I would prefer that you call me Braxiatel.” He stood up and extended his hand to the new girl.

She shook it, a funny smile crossing her face, and as she looked up at him, Brax was once again reminded of Romana. She had the same sardonic look on her face, the same sort of smile, the same general attitude. “I am Pandora,” she said. “And the boy who came in with us is Wynter.”

“Yes, we did actually know that,” Romana replied, her voice dry. “We aren’t entirely stupid, you know.”

“Could have fooled me,” Darkel said, smiling sweetly.

Romana rolled her eyes, not even bothering to reply. Instead, she turned to Pandora and gave a smile, the sort that Brax knew was mildly annoyed, but to everyone else looked pleasant and friendly. The fact that Romana had that many degrees of smile was impressive, he had to admit. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” she said, her voice perhaps a little too sarcastic to continue the illusion of friendliness. 

Pandora looked like she was about to say something else, when Wynter walked over. He had a babyface, even for a freshman, with an upturned nose and a light dusting of freckles. His face lit up when he saw Romana, and he waved enthusiastically with his hand that wasn’t holding a cup of coffee.

“Romana!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t know we’d see you here!”

“And I didn’t realize you drank coffee,” Romana replied, raising a single arch eyebrow. 

His cheeks turned pink. “It’s hot chocolate, actually,” he said. “Caffeine makes me jittery.”

She smiled politely and shot a  _ look _ at Brax. He took the cue and stood up, closing his textbook and notebook and putting them in the messenger bag he used in place of a backpack. (He had an  _ image, _ and a backpack would ruin it.) “It was lovely meeting you, Pandora,” he said, offering her a smile that he hoped was a little more genuine than Romana’s. “We’d love to stay and chat, but we were actually just finishing up here.”

“Really?” Darkel asked, sounding shocked, but in a sarcastic way. “I think I should be offended.”

“Darkel,” said Brax, giving her his politest, most painstaking smile. “Be so kind as to fuck off, won’t you?” He really wished he had a mustache. The vibe a mustache would have given that sentence was, in Brax’s eyes, the perfect blend of threatening and classy. (Of course his mustache would be classy, if he could only grow one.)

He followed Romana out of the Panopticon, not bothering to see how long the shocked expression stayed on Darkel’s face. He was petty, but he did have  _ some _ standards. Instead of checking out what was almost certainly a priceless expression, he allowed himself a satisfied and, he hoped, enigmatic smile, one that wasn’t meant for anyone in particular, but which hopefully imparted an air of mystery and, one would hope, intimidation.

Romana said he cared too much about his image.


	5. Friends? Sounds Like a Disease

He was going to die. It was as simple as that. Narvin was going to die.

It would probably be a gruesome death, big enough to make headlines at least in the region. Narvin could see it now:  _ Local Boy Found Walled Up In Basement, _ or something like that. (Or maybe he shouldn’t have read any Poe over summer vacation.) He couldn’t survive tutoring Leela, there was no possible way. If his parents ever found out he was tutoring the “slutty immigrant,” as they’d referred to her on the rare occasions that they’d seen her, he’d be in more trouble than he’d ever been in ever.

They’d be proud of him if he were tutoring anyone else. Literally anyone else. Not some immigrant girl who nearly flunked tenth grade and had been dress coded — by himself, no less! — nearly every week for the past two years of school.

Narvin had arrived home late after the first tutoring session — he and Leela had spent more time insulting each other than actually studying, he was pretty sure — only to find his parents waiting up for him, wanting an explanation for his late return.

That was what his parents were like, after all. Brax’s parents were gone half the time and didn’t care what he did, Romana’s parents were always busy, he hadn’t seen Leela’s the entire time he’d been at her house, Darkel’s parents were obsessively proud of their daughter to the point where she could do no wrong, the jocks all got a certain amount of freedom because of practices and games. It felt like Narvin was the only person in the entire school who had to explain every single detail of his life to his parents.

Of course, he didn’t explain every single detail of his life to his parents. They trusted him enough to think he was always truthful, and beyond that, they didn’t care enough to actually be involved in anything. Thankfully. It was a weird combination of neglect and helicopter parenting.

So when he told them he’d been asked to tutor a student, they asked him who. And Narvin had lied and said, “Oh, she’s a sophomore, you wouldn’t know her.” And when Narvin’s parents made a big fuss over the fact that she was a  _ girl, _ because apparently they thought Narvin was incapable of behaving normally around girls, Narvin had told the truth and said, “Don’t worry, she’s got a boyfriend.” And when his parents asked where he’d been tutoring her, he lied and said the library. And when his parents got suspicious, since he had gotten home so late and the library closed at 8:30, he told them that he’d walked her home, since it was late and dark and the girl was nervous.

And then he told them that he was going to decline the tutoring job, because the girl was kind of annoying. That seemed to satisfy them, and they reminded him that his curfew on school nights was 10:00 and he’d nearly missed it, and it wouldn’t do to get home late on the very first day of school, now, would it? And he’d nodded and agreed with them, because really, what else could he do? 

But now he had to tell Leela that he wasn’t tutoring her. Or maybe he should tell Brax. If he was tutoring Leela, he’d have to work around her weird sports schedule, and also his parents would definitely murder him if they ever found out he was  _ helping _ that particular student. He hadn’t wanted a tutoring job anyway, and it wasn’t like he cared for Leela at all. In fact, he didn’t like her. She was annoying and terrifying and couldn’t seem to get the dress code through her thick skull. She got into fights when she thought that something was unfair, and she thought a lot of things were unfair. She was a threat to the basic law and order of high school.

Narvin cringed even as he thought it. High school had no law and order, and him even thinking about it in that way made him seem weird and pretentious. Like Brax. He shuddered at the thought.

He managed to avoid Brax and Leela pretty well for the rest of the week. It helped that both tended to attract attention and Narvin was good at avoiding said attention. Day one had been a refresher course for him in how to avoid people while surrounded by them. Now he was a pro. People ignored him and he avoided those who wouldn’t. It made life a lot easier.

The only place he wasn’t safe was the cafeteria. People were suddenly choosing to sit by him, and he didn’t like that. Sometimes it was Brax and Romana and Leela, and sometimes they were joined by Andred, but half the time he sat with his jock friends, and sometimes Narvin was joined by people like Darkel and Matthias and Trave and the new girl, the exchange student, Pandora. She’d struck up a friendship with Darkel, much to Narvin’s surprise. Mainly because he thought it was impossible to actually be friends with Darkel. She was one of those vindictive girls who was probably blackmailing half the class. (Although, from what Narvin could tell, Darkel didn’t know any gossip beyond what was happening in her own little circle, so he didn’t know  _ how _ she could be blackmailing half the class. It just seemed like something Darkel would do.)

Pandora was perhaps the only interesting person in that entire group. Trave was obsessed with West Point. Matthias was pleasant but boring beyond belief, and apparently had nothing better to talk about than his summer job for some kind of pest infestation company. Livia was the new class president, but no one actually cared and it pissed her off, because people had cared when Romana had been class president. 

But Pandora was new, and that made her interesting. She was smart, too smart for the group she was hanging out with, and Darkel practically worshipped her. Her English was perfect, and despite never having lived in an English-speaking country, her accent wasn’t nearly as thick as, say, Leela’s.

She’d also managed to get a hold of Narvin’s number, probably from Darkel, from the days when she and Narvin had been on friendlier terms, and had started texting him outside of school. Which didn’t seem too harmful, Narvin decided. As long as his parents didn’t find out. (Although Pandora was an exchange student, not an immigrant, and she was educated and from a wealthy family, so his parents probably wouldn’t care if he became friends with her. It was Leela they would have had a problem with.)

Narvin’s plans on Friday afternoon and evening consisted of staying in his room, listening to the Smiths through his earbuds, and getting his homework done. And then maybe watching a movie or something, he didn’t know. He wasn’t planning on going anywhere or doing anything. Usually that implied having to spend time with other people, and he really didn’t want to do that.

What he really wasn’t planning on was a text from Romana, telling him that he was going  _ bowling _ with her and “some others.”

_ Who said I would agree to that? _ he texted back. Something was up. Something was definitely up. Romana didn’t like him that much, he was convinced of it. And Brax only talked to him to annoy him. And Leela hated him. And that little freshman they’d been hanging out with, Wynter, was a spineless people-pleaser, he was convinced of it. And any other people they might have with them would be just as annoying.

_ You don’t have anything else going on, _ Romana replied.  _ And I’ve just pulled up to your house, so you had better be ready. _

Narvin swore under his breath and looked out the window. Sure enough, a car was outside. He paused his music, yanked the earbuds out of his phone, and found his shoes.

When he got to the front door, Romana was already inside, talking to his parents. Her long, blonde hair was loose, falling over her shoulders, and she had a wide, innocent smile on her face. Narvin knew from school that she was good at getting adults to like her, he just didn’t realize she’d try to do the same thing to his parents.

“Yes,” Romana was saying brightly, as he walked over, pulling a flannel on over his gray t-shirt, “Narvin and I share some AP classes together, and we’ve always gotten along pretty well, so I thought I’d invite him to do something with me and my friends.”

She was a better liar than Narvin would have liked to give her credit for. They’d never even been friendly acquaintances. Their statuses among the intellectual elite of the school ensured that they ran in the same circles, but Romana was usually too enlightened to do anything with Narvin, and Narvin was just fine with that. It was so much easier to hate the student body when the student body generally ignored your existence.

“So it’s a group outing?” Narvin’s father asked. He looked over his shoulder at Narvin and raising his eyebrows sternly. “You and Narvin and some friends?”

“Of course!” Romana said, her voice weirdly cheerful. Romana usually sounded like a world-weary head of state, not a bright, enthusiastic, perhaps somewhat childish teenager. She really was doing her best to make a good impression on his parents. “My friend Irving Braxiatel is in the car, and I still need to pick up another friend.”

Narvin’s mother turned to look at him. “Why didn’t you tell us this was happening?” she asked, and Narvin’s stomach sank. It wasn’t so much that he was disappointed about the inevitable negative on permission, definitely not. He didn’t  _ want _ to go  _ bowling _ with  _ Romana _ and  _ Brax _ and probably  _ Leela. _ He’d been doing his best to avoid them all week. It was more the talk that would follow after Romana had been politely ousted from the house, the one about  _ planning ahead of time _ and  _ making good choices in friends _ and especially the weirdness his parents got whenever he mentioned girls, like they thought he’d ruin his life just by talking to them.

Romana came to his rescue. “I should have asked him earlier,” she said, drawing their attention away from him and back to her. Which wasn’t so bad, since she always seemed to be an attention hog, and he wanted approximately none of it. “I only just texted him about it. He’s as confused as you are, probably.”

His parents looked back at him, and he did his best to look suitably confused. He saw Romana roll her eyes at him from behind his parents’ backs, but she gave him a grin. There had to be something wrong with her. There was no way Romana could actually want him to go  _ bowling _ with her and Brax and Leela and whoever else she might have invited. Maybe she’d lost a bet. That was probably it.

“She just texted me like five minutes ago,” Narvin said, holding up his phone, as if that were proof. He realized as he spoke that he incorrectly used the word  _ like, _ but Romana was there, so his parents wouldn’t start talking about being “grammatically correct” or telling him that he was picking up bad habits from his classmates. That was something they did sometimes, when the mood struck them.

But it seemed to be enough for his parents. They looked from him to Romana, who smiled sweetly at them. Narvin hadn’t realized Romana knew how to smile sweetly. “I suppose it’ll be fine tonight,” his father finally said. “But in the future, I want at least forty-eight hours notice. Understand?”

“Yes,” Narvin muttered, feeling his face turn red. He didn’t want anyone seeing his parents, least of all Romana. He didn’t want her superciliousness, nor did he want her pity. 

“Oh, good,” Romana gushed (did Romana even know  _ how _ to gush? Since when was she like this?), and she beckoned to Narvin. “Come on, we don’t want to leave Brax waiting.” She offered another smile to his parents (what was  _ wrong _ with her?) and said, “Lovely to meet you! What time should he be home?”

“No later than 11:30,” his mother said quickly. “And really, if he can get home earlier, that would be wonderful.”

“Right,” said Narvin, slowly, wondering how exactly Romana had managed to charm his parents, who were usually so strict and anti-public school. They extended that to the other students at school, usually. “Uh. Bye.”

And then he was following Romana outside, into the growing darkness of an early September evening, still half-mute in surprise. Romana’s car was waiting in the driveway, with Brax in shotgun, just like Romana had said. He was stroking at his upper lip, which was one of the only signs that he was trying to grow a mustache at this point, and when he noticed Narvin and Romana, his hand snapped away, and he waved. He was wearing a suit, just like he had worn a suit for school every single day so far, and Narvin distractedly wondered just how many three-piece suits Brax owned. How many suits did a sixteen-year-old even need?

“Uh,” Narvin said again. “Why am I going bowling with you?”

Romana paused at the door of her car and rolled her eyes, letting out an exasperated noise. “Because I said so.”

This was not the answer Narvin had been expecting. He was expecting either a detailed argument, possibly including citations, or else some sort of cryptic remark. That was how Romana and her friends operated. It was also how Darkel and her friends operated. It was something Narvin was used to by now. He was not used to Romana giving the same answer a six-year-old or the really annoyed parent of a toddler might give in response to this sort of question.

“No, really,” Narvin tried again. “I thought this was something people generally did with their friends.”

She nodded, blonde hair falling over her shoulders. “Yes, and you never do this sort of thing. Ergo, you don’t have any friends. You should really get some.”

He smiled tightly at her, not feeling any warmth towards her. “If I want friends, I’ll get some,” he replied. “I’m not reliant on you feeling so sorry for poor, friendless me.”

“Oh, I’m not sorry for you at all,” Romana said bluntly.

“What?”

She sighed. Narvin would never admit it to Romana, but the amount of exasperation she managed to convey in that sigh was actually impressive. “Just get in the car, Narvin.”

He got in the car.

Brax turned around to greet him, and the smile on his face convinced Narvin that this  _ humiliation _ was all his doing. “Nice to see you again, Narvin,” he said, in a voice that was so oddly formal that Narvin half-expected him to shake his hand.

“I wish I could say the same, but that would be a lie,” Narvin replied, wondering just how much rudeness he could get away with.

“Boys.” Romana started her car and, even though Narvin couldn’t see her face clearly, he was certain she was rolling her eyes. She pulled out of Narvin’s driveway, and continued. She glanced back at Narvin, then focused her attention back on the road. “Can you drive, Narvin?”

“Uh. Yes, but I don’t see why you should care.” He also didn’t have a car, and his parents were very strict about him using their vehicles.

She sighed. “I’m doing this thing called being polite, actually.” She glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “Since you’re coming along with us and doing things that friends usually do together, I thought I’d be nice.”

“So you thought you’d be nice by asking if I knew how to drive?”

“Alright, it wasn’t the best icebreaker question, but I want to avoid the really bad ones that Brax knows from his days at summer camp when he was ten.” Narvin could see the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile in the rear view mirror.

Of course, Narvin could feel his mouth doing much the same, totally against his will. At Romana’s reply, his brain had (unhelpfully) conjured the image of Brax, in his stupid three-piece suits, stuck at a summer camp. It was too much even for Narvin’s frankly remarkable self-restraint. 

Brax, on the other hand, did not smile. Or, he did, but it was one of those pained smiles, one that was almost a grimace. “Romana,” he said, voice strained. “I  _ did _ ask you never to breathe a word of that ever again.”

“It’s not like Narvin is going to blackmail you,” Romana replied, sounding much more cheerful than she usually did. Maybe she just enjoyed tormenting people. Narvin wouldn’t have put it past her. “It’s not like Narvin is the head of some. top-secret spy agency or something. What, do you think Narvin has like, a little Google doc filled out with all the embarrassing stories he can find?” She let out a snort of sarcastic laughter. “A gossip spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel?”

This was, in fact, exactly the sort of thing Narvin did, although he usually tried to keep it restricted to relevant gossip, but he wasn’t about to tell Romana.

“I don’t know that Narvin has either of those things, but they do rather seem like things he would attempt.” Brax cast a sidelong glance back at Narvin.

“Oh,” said Narvin, feeling his sarcasm rise with his anxiety. “I didn’t realize that you spent so much time studying my character.”

Before Brax could respond, Romana sighed. “Boys, if you’re going to flirt, wait until I’m  _ out _ of the car.” She pulled into another driveway and parked. “I’ll just be a moment. This is your chance.”

Narvin wondered if his face had turned red. He certainly felt very warm. He wasn’t  _ flirting _ with Brax, he didn’t  _ want _ to flirt with Brax, and he didn’t want any of his interactions with Brax to make it  _ appear _ like he was flirting with Brax. If his  _ parents _ heard Romana talking like that, he’d be dead for sure.

Actually, there were a lot of things that Narvin’s parents would probably kill him for. He was half-expecting an interrogation when he got home. Actually, scratch that, he was fully expecting an interrogation once he got home. Because, according to his parents, the vast majority of high schoolers were stoners or something, when in reality, it was only that one weird group that hung out near the cloisters, near the town hall. His parents thought all teenagers were sex-crazed, underage drinking, drug-addicted losers.

The reality, of course, was nothing like that. And anyway, whether or not a person was a virgin didn’t determine whether or not they were a good person. There were too many other factors that Narvin had to work in. There was a reason he had that spreadsheet.

And then Romana was back, and sliding into the back seat behind her was…

“Oh, no,” said Narvin.

“Wow. Wow. What a nice way to say hi. Romana, I thought your friends were cooler than this.” Ace kicked the back of Romana’s seat with her boot. She was wearing the black bomber jacket that she always seemed to have with her, and her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had a devilish grin on her face. Which seemed to be her usual expression, to be honest.

“When you said you still had to pick up another friend, I thought it would be _ Leela,” _ Narvin complained, realizing that he was sounding whiny. Oh, well. Let them think he was a whiny little bitch. Maybe it would make them leave him alone in the future.

Romana shook her head, hair falling over her shoulders. “She’s on a  _ date. _ Too busy with her boyfriend to do something as exciting as going bowling.” Narvin wondered if the sarcasm in her voice was disdain for Andred or if she had a low opinion of bowling. Or both. “Besides,” she added, turning half around in her seat as she backed out of the driveway, “I thought you didn’t like Leela.”

“Does Narvin actually like anyone?” Brax asked.

“Yep,” said Ace cheerfully. “He thinks I’m great, don’t you, Narv?”

“Did you just call me  _ Narv?” _ Narvin asked. He wondered if this was normal behavior for people who were friends, and decided that if it was, he definitely didn’t want friends. He could handle enemies, rivals, acquaintances, idiots like Torvald, all the social interactions those people required. He didn’t think he could handle _ teasing. _

“Yeah, I did,” Ace replied, still cheerful. She didn’t have any gum, but Narvin got the feeling that she was the sort of person to blow huge, annoying bubbles with gum just to spite whoever she was talking to. “‘Cause I think it sounds cool. Or at least, it’s the coolest that a name like  _ Narvin _ could ever sound.” She turned to him and winked.

Narvin ignored her. Instead, he addressed Romana. “I didn’t realize you were friends with her.”

Romana shrugged. “Thought I should branch out with my friends. You know, not every freshman is all that bad this year.”

“Thanks, I think,” Ace put in helpfully.

“Oh, come on, you know Theta, right?” Romana said, a little defensive. “Weren’t you friends with him? So you can’t be all that bad.”

“She  _ what?” _ Narvin said, his voice going high, screechy, uncontrolled. Apparently he just couldn’t catch a break. Everyone he interacted with had some opinion about Theta. The most talked about freshman in history, probably. Just his luck that all these people were friends with Theta in some way. It was disgusting.

Ace half-turned to him, her expression that of perfect innocence. “Yeah, Theta and I were best buddies for a while, there. There was this one day at the science center…”

Narvin didn’t think he could take much more of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day late, but hey, only a day! (Belated Happy Valentine’s Day, celebrate with this non-romantic chapter)


	6. Am I Bowling You?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter, but I was hit with writer’s block and also TW3, so I’m going to apologize in advance.

Romana had decided that she was still annoyed with Brax. Sure, he was her best friend and had been for years, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t acknowledge how arrogant, annoying, and insufferable he was. If anything, she decided, she understood just how annoying he was more than anyone else, since they were best friends and she therefore had to deal with him more than anyone else. She was usually annoyed with him at least a little bit, and if she was being honest, he deserved her annoyance more often than he got it.

Currently, she was annoyed because he’d talked her into inviting Narvin along to go bowling. And then he’d convinced her that it would be fun to go bowling. Romana was not a great bowler. But she had to agree that it would be nice to change up her social activities a little bit, and bowling wasn’t particularly  _ harmful, _ so she’d gone along with it. And then she’d gone along with the whole “inviting Narvin” thing, even though she still couldn’t figure out why Brax  _ wanted _ to invite him.

Because Narvin was just… the worst. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, because she was pretty sure Darkel and her gang were worse than Narvin, but her point still stood when she said that Narvin was unpleasant. Darkel was a two-faced bitch, but she could at least  _ pretend _ to be nice. Narvin was… Narvin. Unpleasant and sarcastic and when he tried to be polite, he ended up sounding weirdly slimy. He’d apparently been homeschooled until middle school, but instead of ending up weird and socially awkward, he’d ended up being really stuck-up or something. At least, that was the only way Romana could explain his behavior. He thought he was better than everyone else in school, or something. It was the only thing that made sense.

But here he was, sitting in the backseat of her car, griping about Ace and exchanging insults with Brax in a way that was just familiar enough for it to sound like flirting. Romana hadn’t realized he was  _ friends _ with Brax, mainly because she didn’t think Narvin knew how to be friends with  _ anyone. _ But here he was.

Ace was another enigma. Romana didn’t know her at all, despite knowing multiple freshmen in this year’s class: Wynter and Annos, for example. And Theta would have been a freshman, had he not run away, and his boyfriend, Koschei, would have as well. But they were apparently in Europe, having the time of their lives. She was a little envious of them, if she was totally honest. But that was beside the point. The point was that she knew several people in the freshman class, and she’d lived in Gallifrey her entire life, and her parents had lived in Gallifrey their entire lives, and it wasn’t like it was a huge town, so she knew most of the people here. And she didn’t know Ace, not until Ace had come up to her at lunch one day, sat down across from her, stuck her hand out and said hi.

And once she learned that Ace was  _ also _ somehow friends with Theta, she was willing to be friends with Ace. If she was good enough to be friends with Theta, she was good enough for Romana. That was how it worked. 

She hadn’t realized that Narvin knew Ace somehow. Clearly, he didn’t consider himself to be friends with her (although she knew Narvin didn’t consider himself to be friends with  _ anybody _ , so she was taking his apparent dislike with a grain of salt), but Ace seemed to think he was okay. Which was also odd, because Narvin was the biggest narc she’d ever met, and she got the feeling that Ace would hate people like that.

She sighed without meaning to. Brax looked over at her then, eyebrows raised, hand at his sparsely-mustached upper lip, where it seemed to reside most of the time, these days. She knew he wanted to grow a mustache and that his body apparently really  _ didn’t _ want the mustache, but honestly, he was checking its progress so frequently that it was starting to look like a nervous habit.

“How long do you think it’ll be before Narvin spontaneously combusts?” she asked Brax, giving him a quick sideways glance as she pulled into the bowling alley parking lot. 

Brax chanced a glance over his shoulder, where Narvin was sitting, curled in on himself, a death glare on his face. He turned back to Romana. “Not too much longer, I would imagine,” he replied. “Give him a few more minutes with Ace and he’ll either spontaneously combust or else he’ll just start screaming. You know, like a kettle that’s boiling.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Narvin said from somewhere behind Romana, sounding sullen.

“It’s not like we’re trying to hide anything from you, Narvin,” Brax replied, a mixture of sarcasm and annoyance.

“Boys,” Romana sighed, the warning tone in her voice giving way to tiredness. She couldn’t figure out why Brax was so insistent on including Narvin in all of these different things, in reaching out to him to become friends with him, if all he was going to do around Narvin was squabble with him like they were an old married couple.

Brax worked in mysterious ways.

The bowling alley was like any bowling alley Romana had ever been to. There was a bored-looking teen that Romana didn’t recognize standing behind the counter, looking at them with something like dislike, or maybe boredom. Other people were bowling, psychedelic animations flashing across the screens. The carpet was bright, colorful, and tacky.

And, despite everything, Romana was having some fun. She wasn’t particularly good at bowling, which was a bit of a rude awakening, since she was used to being good at most things. But no one else was any good, either, so she didn’t feel too bad about it.

Near the end of their first game, someone tapped her on the shoulder from behind. She spun around, successfully shocked and ready to snap at whoever it was, only to see Leela, in shorts and a tank top, red hair in a ponytail that was well on its way to completely falling out.

“What are you doing here?” Romana asked, giving her friend a quick hug. Romana wasn’t one for hugs or physical contact, but Leela was, so she would give hello and goodbye hugs.

The smile on Leela’s face was replaced with a look of annoyance, her eyebrows drawing together and her mouth tightening. “Andred cancelled. Again.” Her tone was light, but the look on her face betrayed her true feelings.

“You should dump him,” Romana said matter-of-factly. This was her normal response to anything involving Andred. He wasn’t a  _ bad _ person, necessarily, but he, like most of Gallifrey, was very… small-minded. Most of the town channeled that into truly astonishing amounts of xenophobia. Andred did not, surprisingly, but he had no plans for his life. He wanted to be a police officer, just like his father, and he wanted to live in Gallifrey his whole life, even though it was objectively a sucky little town, and he thought that the greatest achievement in life was if one of the sports teams he was on 

could win a big tournament.

And anyway, Leela was only dating him because he was vaguely good-looking and was one of the first friendly people she’d met after moving to this country. He had brown hair, and was surprisingly skinny, which hid the fact that he was actually a good athlete, and his personality was as boring as a wannabe cop’s personality could be expected to be. Leela was way out of his league. The only problem was that Leela didn’t care about that, because apparently she loved him a lot. 

True to form, Leela let out a huff of breath and carelessly shoved loose strands of hair out of her face. “I am  _ not _ dumping him, Romana. He is just very busy right now.”

Romana raised her eyebrows, wondering if Leela would get mad at her if she rolled her eyes. She rolled her eyes anyway. “Oh. Okay. And what’s he so busy with tonight? It’s Friday night, that’s a normal date night for literally everyone.”

“I do not know,” Leela replied, and she sounded annoyed at Andred again. “He is doing something with a friend of his, I think. He did not say who.”

“That’s suspicious,” Romana said. She didn’t think Andred was the sort of person to cheat on his girlfriend, but his behavior over the summer had definitely been getting weirder and weirder. First he was hanging out with  _ Torvald, _ who was basically the definition of creepy, perverted teenager, and then he’d started cancelling just about every date or study session with Leela. And the only reason she knew was that Leela would then get annoyed and a little upset, and she’d tell Romana, and then Romana would tell her to dump Andred.

There was no doubt about it, something weird was going on with Andred, and Leela was going to get hurt even worse if she didn’t break things off with him soon. But Romana didn’t think she could say something about it to Leela, because she would just get brushed off. It wasn’t like Romana had ever been a huge fan of Andred. Too much of a dumb jock.

Of course, if Leela had been a boy, Romana probably would have categorized her as a dumb jock, too. But there was something different about Leela. For one thing, she was friends with Theta, too. And she had moments where she seemed almost ancient, full of weird bits of wisdom that Romana never would have thought of herself. And she was intense. Very intense. The jocks were a laid-back group, easy to get along with and easy to ignore. A few of them were jerks, but even those kids had good moments. Hallan, for example, was loyal to his friends, almost to a fault, and he was generally very polite to everyone. But Romana knew for a fact he would go and talk about people behind their backs if he didn’t like them. He had done that with Leela not all that long ago.

Leela just rolled her eyes at Romana’s comment, though, as Romana knew she would. “You do not like  _ anything _ Andred does,” she replied, raising her voice so she could be heard over the music and the sounds of bowling. “You… you…” She paused for a moment, looking over Romana’s shoulder. “What is  _ Narvin _ doing here?” she asked suddenly, her voice dropping to a violent whisper.

Romana glanced over her shoulder just in time to see Narvin beckoning her over. She ignored him and turned back to Leela. “I’m not quite sure,” she admitted. “Brax has some sort of plan, I guess, but I don’t know what it is.”

“I know,” Leela said, sighing. “He is taking everything very seriously this year. It is almost like he thinks there will be a battle.”

“Oh, and he thinks  _ Narvin _ will be a useful ally?” Romana asked, raising her eyebrows incredulously. “I think I need to have a chat with Brax at some point.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s getting delusional again.”

Before Leela could reply, Narvin was striding over, looking annoyed. “I thought you said Leela wouldn’t be coming,” he said, addressing Romana.

“I had a change of plans,” Leela replied, her voice cold. “I did not think you would be here. If I had, I would not have come.”

Wow. Romana stepped back, because the tension had suddenly skyrocketed. Narvin and Leela were glaring at each other, practically bristling with anger or hatred or something. Narvin’s hands were shoved deep into his pockets, Leela’s arms were crossed tightly over her chest, both looked nearly ready to launch into a physical fight. Romana knew they didn’t like each other. She hadn’t realized how intense that hatred was.

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. She should have guessed that they would be ready to kill each other. Leela was always ready to fight anyone, and Narvin was a bit of a jerk. Neither one really knew how to chill.

“Was there a reason you were trying to get my attention?” Romana finally asked Narvin, trying to break the tension. “Or were you just asking about Leela?”

Without looking away from Leela, Narvin gestured somewhere behind him. “It’s your turn.”

Romana walked away, wondering if it was safe to do so, or if Leela and Narvin would actually get into a fight.

“You look worried,” Ace said cheerfully, as Romana picked up her bowling ball. “What happened, did you just remember that you missed a problem on a test in like, fifth grade?”

She ignored that. It was probably Ace’s version of teasing. “Leela showed up,” she said. “And now I think she and Narvin are about to kill each other.”

Ace glanced back at Narvin and Leela, who now appeared to be talking to each other. Talking to each other very animatedly, both with mirror expressions of disgust on their faces. “Oh, you’re right,” she said nonchalantly, as Romana attempted to get something slightly better than a gutter ball. “How much you wanna bet it’ll turn into an actual fight?”

Romana waited until her bowling ball knocked over two pins, and then replied. “I’d rather not bet.” She brushed imaginary dust off of her shirt. “We’ll separate them before it comes to a fight.” She looked sternly at Ace, who was looking stubborn. “Right?”

“All I’m saying is, if they  _ do _ fight, I can get us some free snacks.”

“What about free snacks?” Brax asked, coming up behind them with his bowling ball.

“Oh,” Ace replied. “Romana and I were discussing the possibility of Narvin and Leela getting into a fight before we leave tonight. I said that if they get into a fight, I can get us some free snacks.”

Brax heaved the bowling ball, with minimal success. “I’d be more concerned about getting kicked out of here,” he said.

Ace waved a dismissive hand and clutched at the front of her jacket, like she was gripping the lapels of a sport coat. “Not a problem.”

“And why is that?” Romana asked, as Brax tried to bowl again, and again with minimal success.

Ace rolled her eyes and, to Romana’s surprise, blushed a very faint shade of pink. “My parents may or may not be the owners of this place,” she finally said, very quickly, in an almost mumble. “It’s embarrassing.

“So you’re telling me that you could have gotten us free games?” Romana asked, as Brax walked back to join them. “And you didn’t? I’m shocked and disappointed.”

“Don’t be,” said Ace, grinning. She picked up her own bowling ball. “You’re not special enough to be worth free games yet.”

Romana watched her bowl, and wondered a little bit about this girl. She seemed so young, even for a freshman. Wynter had a babyface and sometimes looked like he was twelve, but Ace always looked like she was twelve. She just carried herself with enough authority and sheer braggadocio to make anyone do a double take, wonder if maybe their estimation of her age was wrong. Romana only knew her age because of her grade.

She also wanted to know how Ace and Narvin knew each other. They squabbled like siblings, although Romana suspected that Narvin had actual anger behind it, whereas Ace seemed to view most things as a joke. Either way, it was weird.

—————

“What are you doing here?” Narvin hissed.

Leela tossed her hair, channeling as much superiority as she could muster. “What are _ you _ doing here?” she hissed back. “You are not my friend, nor are you Romana’s, nor are you Brax’s.”

He snorted. “Tell that to him. And Romana. They’re the ones who practically dragged me out of the house tonight.” He eyed her, his face distrustful. But, Leela had to remind herself, distrust from Narvin was normal. He was very paranoid. “This isn’t some weird punishment over the tutoring thing, is it?”

She shook her head, trying to decide whether she would get annoyed at him over automatically assuming she and her friends were trying to punish him over something as idiotic as  _ tutoring, _ or if she’d actually give a normal answer.

“I do not think Romana even knows about it,” she replied, honestly. “I did not tell her, because I did not want for her to worry about me.” She glanced over Narvin’s shoulder, where Romana was talking to that freshman, Ace, and then back to Narvin. “She does not worry about people very well. It is tiresome.” She thought back to Romana’s conversation with her about Andred. It really was tiresome.

“I still want to know what you’re doing here,” Narvin said, an unpleasant look on his face, like he’d just smelled something nasty. “Romana said–”

“Romana does not know everything, she just acts like she does,” Leela replied. “She did not know that I would come. I knew that she would be here, and I was not busy, so I decided to join her.”

“We’ve already started the game, but you can take my spot if you want,” Narvin said. “I don’t care much for bowling.”

She looked at him, then, at the weird boy with the mannerisms of a tired office worker. He was wearing his usual outfit, the dark jeans and dark t-shirt underneath a grayish-black flannel. His pale face was pinched in a look of annoyance, and maybe disgust. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, and that made Leela feel a bit better. She always felt uncomfortable in this town. It was nice to know that one of her antagonists also got that way.

“I do not care much for bowling,” she said lightly. “You should finish the game.”

His lips parted slightly in wordless protest, his eyebrows raising, his gray eyes looking suddenly terrified. And then he shut his mouth, and his face regained its usual stony, disgusted look. “Fine,” he said, and he turned around and walked back over to the lane, without another word.

What an annoying, self-centered, condescending brat.

She decided not to think too hard about the fact that, just a moment earlier, he’d looked actually terrified to hang out with people the way friends do. He was too much of a dick for her to care.


	7. Decisions and Drama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for taking forever to update!

“Narvin,” Brax said, a Cheshire Cat-style grin on his face. He stuck his elbow onto Narvin’s shoulder, using him as an arm rest.

Frankly, Narvin wanted to murder him. The bowling had been the most irritating night of his entire  _ life, _ between being forced to spend time with Brax, Leela, and Ace (and even though Romana hadn’t been insanely annoying, he was mad at her, too, for making him go bowling with them), and he was ready to smack someone over it, even though bowling had been on Friday, and it was now Monday.

The actual act of going bowling with people wasn’t even the worst part of the weekend, though. The worst part was trying to explain who the people were to his parents. Because they’d automatically assumed Romana and Brax were Narvin’s secret friends that he was hiding from them, and it had turned into a whole debate in which Narvin tried to explain that they weren’t friends, he’d just voluntarily (or so  _ they _ thought, they didn’t know what Romana was like) gone bowling with people who weren’t his friends.

So, no. Narvin wasn’t too happy about Brax coming up to him and using him as an armrest. He wasn’t happy about the fact that Brax was tall enough to use him as an armrest. He didn’t like the fact that Brax was still acting like they were friends, when Narvin had done his absolute best to make it clear that they were  _ not, _ in fact, friends.

“Fuck off,” he said. Normally, he would be more polite, but something about Irving Braxiatel made him want to swear. A lot. And he really didn’t want Brax using him as an armrest.

Brax took his elbow off of Narvin’s shoulder and brushed some imaginary dust off of his immaculate gray suit. He offered Narvin another smile, one slightly less manic, and slightly more weird. The usual Irving Braxiatel smile. Narvin was pretty sure Brax thought it made him look mysterious and enigmatic.

...It didn’t make him look mysterious or enigmatic. It just made him look weird and pretentious.

“Language, Narvin,” Brax said. “Or I’ll tell your parents.”

Narvin froze. Had Romana said something about his parents to Brax? Was Brax spying on him? He wouldn’t put it past the fucker, Narvin knew Brax wasn’t above manipulation and blackmail and God knew what else. “You don’t know my parents at all,” he finally replied, trying to keep the same disdainful look on his face that he always had when talking to Brax. “They’ve never met you.”

“Ah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t ever meet them,” Brax said, his grin widening ever so slightly. His smile didn’t reach his eyes, which were watching him coolly. “And it would be so easy to accidentally let slip about the foul language you so frequently use in my presence.”

“You deserve every word of it,” Narvin said, but he could feel his heart start pounding. Brax wouldn’t actually act on it, he wouldn’t dare. His parents would surely trust their own son over some random stranger. (He actually wasn’t certain about that, but he had to trust in  _ something, _ didn’t he?)

Brax leaned over Narvin just a little bit more, clearly enjoying the fact that he was taller. “I don’t deny it,” he said, that annoying I-know-more-than-you smile still etched onto his face. “But do your parents know that?”

Narvin sighed, trying to sound annoyed rather than frightened. “What do you want, Braxiatel?” he asked. It was better to go for disinterested annoyance, boredom, even, than let Brax know that he was feeling panicky. Fortunately, his default tone of voice at school was disinterested annoyance/boredom, so he didn’t have to try too hard to get around the sudden sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Trust Brax to immediately figure out how to make him feel nervous and nauseous. He wracked his brain, trying to figure out if he had any dirt on Brax, if there was anything in his spreadsheet about Irving Braxiatel, but he couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t common knowledge already.

“I have a list. First–”

He groaned. “Can this wait until later?” he asked. “Only I want to get to class on time, and you’re a dick, so I don’t want to talk to you any more than is absolutely necessary.”

“Takes one to know one,” Brax replied, but the annoying grin faded every so slightly from his face, and his voice was a shade cooler. More real, less fake cheerful.

Narvin managed to roll his eyes. “Wow. What an original comeback. Are we in fourth grade again?”

“Clearly not,” said Brax with a sniff. “You were homeschooled at that time.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I already warned you about your language, Narvin.”

That was enough. Narvin rounded on Brax, not caring that he only had a minute and twenty-seven seconds left to get to class, because Irving Braxiatel was a loathsome little cockroach who couldn’t even grow a mustache and apparently indulged in blackmail as a hobby. Narvin wasn’t going to let himself be  _ blackmailed _ by this idiot, by some pretentious sixteen-year-old who thought he was so smart because he had a passing interest in philosophy and fucking  _ art history. _

“You won’t tell my parents,” Narvin hissed, breaking his own personal rules about personal space by jabbing his index finger into Brax’s chest, just below the shoulder. “And even if you do, I’ll just tell them that your little brother was the one who ran off with his boyfriend, and they won’t trust a word you say.” He smiled sarcastically. “My parents are nice like that.”

The smile evaporated from Brax’s face. “Leave my brother out of this,” he said, his voice suddenly low. Menacing.

“Then leave my parents out of this, whatever  _ this _ is,” Narvin said, and shoved his way past, leaving a very angry-looking Brax behind him. He knew he was being rude, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t his fault that Irving Braxiatel was such a dick. He’d rather not deal with that arrogant douchebag. It wasn’t fair that he should be singled out for special attention from Brax, especially not when he’d spent all of middle school and high school trying to be as unlivable as possible.

He was almost late to class, except the teacher was also late, so it was fine, but it meant he had to sit next to a group of jocks, including Andred, which reminded him of Leela, which reminded him of Romana, which reminded him of Brax. So he had to stew over Brax’s blackmail attempt for the entire class, instead of doing anything actually productive.

It was almost a relief to see Darkel between classes, even if she was a bitch. After all, she couldn’t be a bigger bitch than Irving Braxiatel, could she? She was talking with the exchange student, that new girl, Pandora, but when she saw Narvin, a sly smile crossed her face and she waved at him.

He waved back, wary. It wasn’t exactly normal of Darkel to acknowledge his presence, at least beyond what was absolutely necessary. Her parents got along well with his parents, but there was this  _ class distinction _ thing going on there, and he hated it. Just because he was solidly middle-class didn’t mean Darkel had to go around being snobby just to rub it in his face that her family was wealthy. And to someone like Darkel, that meant that she was better than everyone else.

“Narvin,” Darkel said, changing her smile in an attempt to look ingratiating. “What a surprise!”

“Is it?” he asked, stubbornly remaining annoyed. “I thought we went to the same school. And it’s not like this is a  _ big _ school, now, is it? I’d have thought it very easy to bump into everyone, no matter how detestable.”

Darkel’s smile flickered, and for a brief moment Narvin could actually  _ see _ how much she hated him. It was ever-so-slightly frightening, but Narvin already knew there was no love lost between him and Darkel. There was no love lost between him and most of the students in the school. But Darkel usually had such perfect command of her expressions. She was the most fake girl in school, and you could tell by the vibe she tried to project, one of being constantly pleasant.

“Shut up, Narvin,” she said sweetly. “I thought we were having a moment.”

Narvin didn’t say anything, he just raised his eyebrows at her.

“Oh, alright, fine,” she conceded. “Listen, Narvin. I know you try to stay uninvolved and impartial and just an asshole to everyone, so you probably don’t know this, but things are definitely heating up at this school.”

“People always think things are heating up at this school,” Narvin replied, monotone. “It’s sort of the whole driving factor behind high school drama.”

Darkel rolled her eyes, and Narvin found himself being strongly reminded of Romana. “Listen. There isn’t enough time before class starts, but I know we have that study hall together, and I know you won’t get in trouble if you skip it, so you should definitely come with me to the library for this next period, and then I can actually tell you what’s happening. It’s a lot bigger than some petty high school drama.” To Narvin’s surprise, she was being perfectly serious. Like she thought the school would divide into warring factions, or like a zombie apocalypse would hit, or something.

What Narvin really wanted to know was why he was suddenly the most popular person in school. It certainly wasn’t his intention to make friends. Actually, he thought he’d been actively avoiding doing so. But now everyone apparently wanted to be friends with him. Or at least friendly acquaintances. A pawn in some game of high school drama.

Oh, and now he was sounding pretentious again. He’d really been spending too much time with Brax. He really wasn’t appreciating the sudden turn Gallifrey was taking into some absurd, silly, utterly ridiculous teen movie, and he hoped it would soon stop. It was all very well to watch those movies (and Narvin  _ did _ watch those movies, but he’d rather die than admit that to anyone else), but when real life started behaving in the exact same way, it got very annoying. Especially as he couldn’t figure out which character he was being asked to play.

In fact, this whole thing was very weird. Everyone was suddenly starting to behave like they were in a teen movie, but they were also acting like everything was as serious as, say, a political drama, even though this was all minuscule, high school stuff. That was a bit more normal; he was pretty sure Romana would, if allowed, become a dictator willing to do anything to hold onto power, not because she was power-mad, but because she genuinely thought it was the best thing to do going forward. He really hoped she didn’t go into anything with politics.

But as bad as Romana was, he was pretty sure Darkel was even worse. Romana at least had  _ integrity. _ Darkel was a backstabbing, sweet-talking, two-faced bitch. People at school didn’t like her. They were afraid of her. Romana at least had friends, even if she generally treated them as employees.

But he was curious, at least, about what Darkel was talking about, and he knew Mr. Pandak wouldn’t get mad at him for skipping, since it was just a study hall, and Narvin never had trouble with his homework or turning in assignments on time, and anyway, he spent most of the study hall reading whatever book he happened to be working on at the moment. Mr. Pandak didn’t really care, since Narvin was quiet and not a problem student. That was his policy for most things regarding school.

So he followed Darkel to the school library. The librarian, again, didn’t really care who showed up there, as long as you didn’t vape or make out, and since Narvin wasn’t planning on doing either of those things, and the librarian knew he wasn’t the sort of person to do either of those things, she made no comment, not even a raised eyebrow.

When at last they’d gotten farther away from the librarian, Narvin stopped. “What’s going on, Darkel?” he asked, his tone more annoyed than curious.

“I just think,” said Darkel casually, conversationally, even, “that Romana and her little group of friends is up to something.”

Narvin groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re being paranoid. What could they even be up to? It’s not like they’re sitting around just  _ scheming.” _

“You’re probably right,” Darkel agreed, much to his surprise. “That’s something that  _ I _ might have the foresight to do, but Romana isn’t smart enough for something like that.” She allowed herself a satisfied smirk, like her admission that she liked to  _ scheme _ somehow was the qualifying factor in her being better than Romana. Which, knowing Darkel, she probably did think that made her better than Romana. Darkel was another person Narvin hoped would never get into politics. Not because she’d become a dictator intent on staying in power (although he wouldn’t put that past her), but because he was pretty sure she’d be more than willing to assassinate any of her opponents. Kiss the ass of whoever she thought could get her the most power, then kill them when they stopped being useful. She did that, minus the murder, all the time in school.

_ “If _ you think Romana is up to something, it would be stupid of you to underestimate her,” Narvin said, wondering why the hell he was defending Romana. “She’s obviously smart, and she beat you in the election for class president two years in a row, didn’t she?”

“Ah, but Romana is no longer class president,” Darkel said, a gleam in her eye.

“I know. Because she didn’t run again. And you couldn’t even beat Livia.” From the look on Darkel’s face, Narvin was getting under her skin a bit. Annoying her. Which was fine, he thought. He was trying to be annoying. Maybe if he was annoying enough, she and the rest of the world would leave him alone.

“I don’t  _ need _ to be class president,” Darkel snapped. “I just need the class president to be someone other than Romana. That was achieved with Livia.”

Narvin leaned against a bookshelf, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “You  _ do _ realize that this is the tiniest of tiny things?” he asked. “You’re getting really intense over who’s class president. It’s not like they even have a say in anything. Just a useless title that sounds good on a college application.”

“Who cares about policy?” Darkel said, then reconsidered. “Alright, I care about policy, and I think I’d be a good class president–”

“Careful, Darkel, you’re not running for election right now.”

She glared at him. “I care about the  _ respect _ that comes with the office. Look at Romana. She isn’t president anymore, and people still like her and respect her. You can’t get that without being class president, now, can you?”

“Romana was generally liked and respected before she was class president, if you remember,” Narvin said. “I think the problem isn’t with you not being class president, I think the problem is with you.”

“Are you just going to insult me?” Darkel asked, her voice rising.

“We’re in a library, keep your voice down,” Narvin replied, his voice a monotone. A quiet monotone. He was silent a moment more, then said, “So you don’t care who’s class president as long as they’re not Romana, but you want the office of the class presidency because you think that will get you some level of respect, and all of this means that something big is going to happen?”

“No, that doesn’t have anything to do with the things that are happening at school,” Darkel replied, still snappish. “You sidetracked me.”

“Then what _ is _ happening that’s so big and all-important?” Narvin asked, letting out an annoyed noise that wasn’t quite a sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose again. “If it’s so important, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to stay on track.”

“Nothing is certain yet,” Darkel said, her voice dropping lower, “but things are happening. You know that new girl, the exchange student? Pandora?”

Narvin nodded.

“She might be helpful in changing this school for the better.” Darkel grinned, clearly trying to match Brax’s idea of an enigmatic smile, but instead looking rather more like a shark.

“This is high school, you realize,” Narvin said. “You do know that nothing  _ big _ happens in high school and you’re just blowing personal grudges wildly out of proportion.”

“You don’t like Romana or her crew anymore than I do,” Darkel replied, grin fading. “I know how much you hate her friend, that  _ immigrant _ girl who can’t even speak English properly.”

Narvin felt a hot flash of anger, much to his surprise. His facial expression didn’t change, but he wondered just who Darkel was to make fun of a girl for speaking with broken English, when he knew for a fact that Darkel nearly flunked ninth-grade French and dropped any foreign languages immediately afterwards. He didn’t like Leela, that was true, but it wasn’t because she was an immigrant. She was rude and impetuous and liked to see how far she could stretch the rules. She was dating a jock and was basically a jock herself, but was somehow friends with Romana. She had a terrifying dog. These were all good reasons to hate someone. He didn’t want to follow in his parents’ examples and hate her (and her family) just because she was from another country. He’d been raised in xenophobia, but that didn’t mean he had to be exactly like his parents.

The anger was at Darkel’s poor reasons to hate Leela. There were many reasons Leela was detestable, from her attempts to be part of the intellectual elite of the school despite being abysmal at many classes, to her flagrant disrespect of the dress code. Darkel fixated on the fact that Leela was from another country. That deserved a bit of annoyance, maybe some anger.

He ignored the fact that he initially hated Leela because she was a stranger from another country. Those days were behind him. He’d reconciled himself to that, and now he hated her for perfectly understandable, non-xenophobic reasons.

“All I’m saying is, things are going to get worse before they get better,” Darkel said. “I want to make sure I can trust you.”

Narvin let out a huff of laughter before he could stop himself. “You want to  _ trust _ me?” he asked incredulously. “Is that it? You want me to be on your side for some idiotic high school drama?” He paused, took a breath, calmed himself. “Listen, Darkel,” he said. “I appreciate your attempts to...I don’t know, placate me? Befriend me? Whatever. I appreciate it, I guess. Except I don’t  _ want _ to be friends with you. I don’t want to be friends with Romana and her group, either, don’t worry about that.” He paused. “High school is something I want to get through, not actively participate in.” He smiled, but he made sure there was no kindness in it. “Maybe you should learn a thing or two from that.” He walked away, leaving her to stew. 

Stupid drama queens.

He was on his way to the public library after school when Brax caught up to him again. His suit coat was draped over his arm, folded neatly, and his hair was messed up from running to catch up to Narvin.

“Oh, no,” said Narvin, and began walking even faster. If Braxiatel started talking along similar lines as Darkel had been earlier, he didn’t want to deal with trying to talk his way out of whatever convoluted mess Brax would try to get him into. Dealing with Darkel was easy, if annoying. With Brax, Narvin could never be certain what was going on. He remembered very clearly being roped into babysitting Brax’s little brother once. It had ended badly. Theta had suggested a game of hide and seek. Narvin had hidden, and Theta somehow ended up finding an audio file with compromising information on the president and vice-president of the Science Center. He successfully used this information to create a minor scandal, and then remembered that he was supposed to be finding Narvin, not creating gossip about Mr. Kleeb and Mr. Toff, who had been respected members of the community, at that time.

So really, Narvin just didn’t want Brax to try and talk him into doing anything. That was how the worst decisions of Narvin’s life had happened: the play in middle school, babysitting Theta, tutoring Leela.

“Narvin, I wanted to talk to you,” Brax said, panting slightly. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his gray eyes.

“Yes, I’d noticed. You always want to talk to me now, apparently,” Narvin replied, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “Don’t you have something better to do? Like pine after Romana or something?”

Brax’s eyes narrowed, but other than that, his expression didn’t change, and when he spoke, his voice sounded perfectly normal. Like, actually perfectly normal. Not the Irving Braxiatel version. “Why haven’t you been continuing to tutor Leela?” he asked. 

“Why is it any business of yours?” Narvin asked, immediately defensive. He’d been waiting for this, but it didn’t mean he wanted it to happen.

“I promised Leela to tutor her, and then I found out I’d probably be travelling abroad a bit this year, so I promised her I’d find a good replacement tutor.” He met Narvin’s eyes, and Narvin was surprised to see that there was very little pretentiousness or fakery in his eyes. They were wide, earnest, and serious. “I owe her that much, at least.”

“And you picked  _ me _ to be that replacement tutor.” He wanted to laugh derisively, but he didn’t know if he could pull it off. “Despite the fact that we hate each other.”

Brax waved a hand dismissively. “This is high school. Does anyone  _ actually _ hate anyone else? For real? Will you care even the slightest bit about that girl you tutored in high school fifteen years from now?” He raised his eyebrows.

“I’m not going to put myself in discomfort now just because I won’t care about it in fifteen years,” Narvin said. “And anyway, I can’t. I told my parents that I wouldn’t tutor her.”

“Then say it’s a different person. I’m sure they won’t care.”

Narvin snorted. “Some of us aren’t lucky enough to have parents who are actually laid-back, Braxiatel.”

“Come on,” Brax said, and to Narvin’s surprise, he actually sounded a bit desperate. “You’d be great at it. And you have to learn how to work with people you don’t like, because trust me, you’ll have to do it a lot in college and later in your job, whatever that ends up being.”

“Oh, so you’re being generous and giving me the opportunity to practice?”

Brax let out a tiny, pained sigh. “If you actually stopped twisting my words around, you might notice that I never said that, nor was I intending to imply such a thing. I would like you to tutor Leela. I think you both would benefit from it greatly.”

“And I already told you, I can’t. Even if I wanted to, I can’t.” Narvin wished there was a way he could let Brax know the conversation was done, but he couldn’t think of anything, and Brax just kept walking beside him.

“I’ll pay you,” Brax said abruptly.

Narvin stopped walking. “What?”

“I’ll pay you,” Brax repeated. “Fifty dollars a session. Since technically you’re replacing me.”

“I’m not so mercenary as to be swayed by something like that,” Narvin said, but now he was uncertain. The money would be useful. He didn’t have a job, just the same allowance his parents had been giving him since he started middle school. He could save up for college, for a car, for possibly moving out. And it wasn’t like he didn’t know the material he would be helping Leela learn. He paused. “But I’ll have to think about it.”

Brax patted him on the shoulder, and he flinched. “Text me by tonight, whether you accept it or not. I hope you make the right choice.” And with that, he turned around, and began walking in the opposite direction.


	8. Oh, Birv

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have fun :)

_ The sun shone in the purple-hued twilight, the sky itself painted in glorious reds, pinks, and violets, as though it, too, could recognize the significance of this particular evening and was making a particular effort to be part of this little group’s memory. _

_ Ramona sighed, for it was truly beautiful and awe-inspiring. She turned to Birving Axiatel, love in her eyes, her eyes that were blue, the color of the sea on a stormy day. She reached out and stroked Birving Axiatel’s remarkably handsome face, fingers tracing along his cheekbones and resting for a moment next to his luxurious mustache, then continuing down to his chin. _

_ “Oh, Birv,” she crooned, her voice gentle and melodious, her golden hair cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall. “I do love you so, Birv. I thought you didn’t love me back.” _

_ Birving Axiatel kissed the back of her fair hand, her skin soft because she had so thoroughly moisturized it with a lotion that smelled of honeysuckle and roses and something that was unique specifically to Ramona. “Why, Ramona,” he replied, his voice deep and soothing. “I have always loved you. I thought it was you who did not return my feelings, and I did not wish to ruin our wonderful friendship, so I said nothing.” He lifted his eyes, gray like a frolicking dolphin, to meet her sea-blue eyes. Two sets of eyes perfectly matched for each other. _

_ “So you’re saying that all of this could have happened so much sooner?” Ramona asked, her voice rising in a question, regret evident even in that beautiful, pragmatic voice, the voice of an angel. _

_ “But my darling, sweet, divine, beautiful angel, do not waste your time regretting what might have been!” Birving Axiatel cried, the pain of a thousand broken hearts filling his voice, his mustache trembling with emotion. “Instead, think of that which is happening right now. My love, we have now admitted our feelings, and we can be together. Is that not a reason to celebrate?” _

_ She leaned closer to him, her perfume filling the evening air, and Birving Axiatel leaned closer to her, eyes already half-shut, lips slightly parted, fully ready to kiss her, but at that moment, over the hilltop came their two dear, dear friends, holding hands, their fingers entwined. _

_ “Birving? Ramona?” one of them, Lulu, called, her red hair tumbling around her shoulders in a curtain of curls, her smile evident in her voice, looking as radiant as the sunset. “Where did you go?” _

_ “Yes, we missed you,” the other, Marvin, added. His voice was nasally, but to his friends, it was the pleasantest sound in the world. _

_ Birving Axiatel and Romana exchanged smiles, smiles that were both happy and embarrassed. They were happy to see their friends, of course, and happy that their friends were holding hands, but embarrassed to have been caught just before their first kiss, which, on this evening, with the sunset turning the world violet and beautiful, would have indeed been magical. _

“Having a good time?”

Narvin slammed his laptop shut far faster than he needed to, and immediately began taking measured breaths, trying to calm his heart, which he could feel hammering in his chest. He half-turned in his seat, only to see Ace standing behind him, a wicked grin spread wide across her face. He relaxed slightly. “What do you want?” he asked, trying to sound annoyed and not like he’d just had a mini heart attack.

“Just wanted to drop in and see how my best pal was doing. How are ya, Narv?”

Narvin ignored this. She was just being annoying. Deliberately. “How long were you standing there?” he asked cautiously. He wondered if Ace was the sort of person to blackmail people, and realized with a shock that he didn’t know. He actually knew very little about her.

Her grin stretched even further, which he hadn’t thought was possible. If it got any wider, she’d turn into a cartoon and the smile would stretch bigger than her actual face. “Long enough,” she replied, and the  _ glee _ in her voice was enough to make Narvin want to bang his head against the table.

He was at the library. It was his usual go-to place after school. He could hang out there, work on homework, read books, generally remain uninterrupted, and then he could go home for supper. His parents had approved this whole thing back in freshman year, and Narvin hadn’t had the guts to try and actually do anything other than that, even though they hadn’t once checked up on him to make sure he actually followed this schedule. If it got back to them that he’d gone to, say, the Panopticon instead of the library, he’d be in way too much trouble, even though he could get homework done just as easily in a coffee shop as he could in a library. Of course, there was the off-chance they’d shrug something like that off, but the odds were stacked against it.

Ace put a bony elbow on Narvin’s shoulder and leaned on it. “Having a good time writing?” Her tone was light, cheerful, and perfectly innocent — and Narvin knew, he just  _ knew, _ that Ace had managed to read everything.

“Actually,” he said, shrugging her elbow off and putting as much ire into his voice as he could muster, “I was reading, not writing. I don’t do the writing thing, except for school.”

“That was for school? What sort of classes are you taking?” Ace pulled over another chair and sat down next to him, unperturbed by his frigidity.

He let out a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “Keep your voice down,” he hissed.

“Oh, right. Sorry.” She pulled a face, then continued in a stage whisper. “That was for school? What sort of classes are you taking?”

“I already told you. I was reading, not writing. I didn’t write  _ that.” _ Narvin also didn’t have a good reason for reading it, but he hoped Ace wouldn’t get that far.

The thing was, no one knew who the author was. Most people suspected it was a junior, but that was as far as anyone could get it narrowed down. It was a fanfiction, based on the students at school. It was easy to tell who was who, because all the characters had names that were clearly based on the names of their real-life counterparts. No one knew who was writing it, and everyone who talked about it did so derisively, but that didn’t change the fact that everyone at school was reading it, and updates were looked forward to, if only to see what the author would do next. The Brax and Romana characters had just declared their love for each other, and the Narvin character had inexplicably become friends with them, and he really didn’t like the hints that the Narvin character and the Leela character had a thing for each other. He’d tried commenting on one of the updates, once, after the author had begun hinting at a Marvin/Lulu romance, and he’d gotten a very rude reply, so he’d stopped commenting at all. But he was still reading it, despite its ridiculous purple prose and its annoying characterization of him, and the fact that his parents probably would kill him if they found him reading fanfiction that had begun hinting at a gay relationship. (Narvin wasn’t sure how he felt about this new ship, featuring Blandred and Brovald, mainly because he knew both Andred and Torvald, and the thought of anyone being in a relationship with Torvald made him feel very uncomfortable.)

Ace leaned closer to him. “So who wrote it?” she asked. Narvin realized, with something like shock, that of  _ course _ the freshmen wouldn’t know about this fic, since it seemed to mostly be focused on the junior class. It had been going on since freshman year, sure, and was currently sitting at something like 100 thousand words, but that didn’t mean a thing to the little fourteen-year-olds.

He shrugged, forgetting to be annoyed. “There’s a rumor every other week that the author has been discovered,” he replied. “Never turns out to be true. As far as anyone knows, it just spontaneously appears without having been written, like a bizarre fever dream or mass hallucination or something.”

“The My Immortal of Gallifrey High School?” Ace speculated, raising her eyebrows at him. Narvin was once again struck by how very young she looked.

“Something like that,” he said, mainly because he had no clue what she was trying to reference.

She grinned. “I bet it’s Brax. It seems like something Brax would do.”

Narvin opened his mouth to reply, changed his mind, closed his mouth, shook his head, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index fingers. Sure, there were some elements of the fic that made it  _ seem _ like Brax could have written it (the author’s insistence that Birving Axiatel was incredibly handsome, and the fact that, after a slow burn of that size, the Brax and Romana characters had confessed their love for each other, for example), it clearly couldn’t have been written by Brax. Narvin didn’t know  _ who _ had written it, but Irving Braxiatel was not the sort of person to write fanfiction. Irving Braxiatel was the sort of person who listened to Wagner and actually liked it. Clearly, Ace didn’t know any of them very well yet.

But she was already moving on, forgetting about the fanfic, although he was sure she would find it later and begin reading it, since everyone did, eventually. Even Narvin had broken down and started reading it sometime in his sophomore year, and continued to read the updates faithfully.

“Hey, Narv, that kid over there keeps staring at you,” she said, jerking her head in a different direction. Unsubtle, but better than pointing, Narvin supposed. “The rat-stache guy?”

Yes, Narvin knew that, actually. He’d seen Torvald come in, and he’d been pointedly avoiding making any sort of eye contact with the boy, because he didn’t want the pain of being forced into a conversation with him. He’d been successfully avoiding him since the first day of school, and Torvald had been, if not actually leaving him alone, at least giving him a bit more space.

He was about to reply, when he realized she’d called him “Narv” again. Would it be a rude thing to correct her, he wondered? He’d been alive for sixteen years and he’d never once gone by a nickname. And anyway, even if people had ever tried to give him a nickname, he wasn’t exactly receptive to the idea.

Oh, and if he reacted to it, she’d probably just like that. Ace seemed like the sort of person who would torment him for fun. If he let on that he really didn’t like the nickname, she’d probably make sure to call him by it as often as possible, just to be annoying. So he should probably just keep quiet. Let her get bored.

Instead, he let his eyes follow along in the direction Ace had jerked her head, eventually finding Torvald, sitting across the room from him. 

Their eyes met.

Torvald waved and got up.

“Fuck,” said Narvin, quietly but emphatically.

“Did you not want to talk to him?” Ace asked. “Why not? What’s wrong with him? Other than the rat-stache?” She was like a little kid, not shutting up and just continuing to ask more and more annoying (and potentially embarrassing) questions.

“Just…” Narvin didn’t continue, because Torvald had walked across the room, and was now enthusiastically sitting down across from him.

“Narvin!” he exclaimed, grinning brightly, his voice far too loud for a library. A librarian stopped shelving books to shoot them a dirty look. “I haven’t talked to you in forever! How’s school been treating you?”

It was like talking to one of his parent’s friends. He half-expected a remark about golf or the weather, or for Torvald to grip him by the shoulder and call him “champ” or “kiddo,” because that was what his parent’s friends had been doing since he was about five years old, and they didn’t seem to be about to quit anytime soon. It was the most infantilizing, annoying thing he’d ever been put through, and the fact that he was put through this humiliation on a regular basis only served to make him hate everything about his parents friends even more than he already did.

“School’s been great,” Narvin said tightly, an uncomfortable, strangled sort of smile stretched across his face, more grimace than anything else. School was  _ not _ great, actually, but he wasn’t going to tell Torvald that. The sooner this conversation could be over and done, the sooner he could attempt to get rid of Ace and finish reading this chapter update.

“Really?” Ace said, before Torvald could respond, and when Narvin snapped his head around to look at her he had to bite back a groan, because there was a wicked glint in her eye, even if it hadn’t quite manifested in a grin on her face. “But I thought you hated everyone in the whole world, especially at school?”

Torvald blinked once, twice, then took a breath and said, “You must not know Narvin very well. He and I are super close, like, close enough that we could be brothers, practically.” He stuck out a hand in Ace’s direction. “I’m Torvald.”

Ace looked at his hand with something like disgust, then slapped it. There was a resounding  _ thwack! _ and Torvald jerked his hand away, shaking it, surprised. The librarian shot them another dirty look. “Ace,” she said shortly. To Narvin’s surprise, she sounded bored. Annoyed, even. Much different than the bright, wicked, cheerful voice she used around Narvin, and suddenly Narvin was struck with a horrible thought: did  _ Ace _ think of  _ him _ as a  _ friend? _ Was that why she seemed intent on making his life miserable? It was almost as bad as having Torvald think of him as a friend. Almost.

“Beg pardon?” Torvald asked, wiping a hand over his upper lip, a nervous tic that Narvin recognized from years of knowing him. He wondered how Ace did it. He’d been trying since middle school to get Torvald to be unnerved by him, and Ace had managed it with a word, a weird, sideways high-five where a handshake was expected, and a wicked glint in her eye. It was impressive.

“Ace,” Ace repeated. She shoved her hands, balled into fists, into the pockets of her black bomber jacket. “My name,” she added, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Torvald was an idiot for not realizing when she’d first said it. “It’s funny,” she added, her voice somehow sounding both bored and threatening, “but Narvin and I are friends, too, and I don’t remember him mentioning you.”

Oh. Oh,  _ shit. _ He shouldn’t have said anything about not liking Torvald. He hadn’t realized Ace would try to, to, to act like  _ that. _ Of course, this also confirmed his recently-formulated theory, that Ace thought of him as a  _ friend, _ and now he had to deal with that, but for the time being, he was too busy trying to decide if he should feel excited or happy or upset or annoyed or what. On the one hand, Ace was on the offensive and clearly telling Torvald to fuck off, and that was exciting to watch, but on the other hand, she’d just brought Narvin into this, implying that Narvin hated Torvald’s guts. 

Which he  _ did.  _ But he didn’t want Torvald to know that.

The greasy smile on Torvald’s face slid down his face, and his eyes grew wide. Narvin knew the wide-eyed stare. It was Torvald’s way of saying, “How  _ dare _ you?” without actually saying it out loud. It involved raising his eyebrows so wide that they appeared to almost be falling off the top of his pimply forehead and opening his eyes so wide that they seemed to be bugging out of their sockets. It meant that Torvald wouldn’t do anything, but he’d be offended and hold a grudge, possibly for several years.

“I’m sure Narvin has mentioned me, and you just didn’t pay attention. See, if you’re a  _ good _ friend, like I am, you actually pay attention when Narvin speaks. I know he can be boring sometimes, but that’s the price of friendship.” He grinned at her again, clearly thinking he’d scored some point in some weird game or competition or something.

Ace tossed her head and smacked her gum loudly in her mouth. “I think you should maybe stop insulting Narvin,” she said. “Since you seem to think you’re his friend and all.”

Narvin couldn’t stop himself from looking back and forth between the two, like he was watching a tennis match. Were they  _ having an argument _ over which one was better friends with him? Narvin didn’t have friends, he didn’t want them, didn’t need them. This wasn’t something he’d ever even imagined would happen to him. It wasn’t something he’d ever  _ wanted _ to happen to him. But now that it was happening, he couldn’t help but feel...warm. He wanted to clap for Ace whenever she scored a point, or said something rude to Torvald, or whatever. And that was another weird thing: he’d picked sides, and he was rooting for Ace. He told himself that it was because Ace was equally annoying, but at least she was a new type of annoying. Torvald was boring and annoying, and his politics were really just...gross. He didn’t know Ace’s political viewpoints, but he got the feeling they didn’t quite align with Torvald’s.

Torvald threw his hands up in the air, then wiped his hand over his upper lip again, the sweat beading on it making his mustache look even more straggly. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. Narvin, I really worry about you. The people you’re associating with these days are weird at best, and kind of terrifying at worst.”

“If you’re talking about Brax…” Narvin’s voice trailed off as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say. That he wasn’t hanging out with Brax by choice? That Brax wasn’t terrifying?

Torvald bugged his eyes out again. “I  _ am _ talking about Brax,” he replied, “and since you immediately guessed who I was talking about, I’m betting you’ve heard some of the rumors about him.”

Narvin didn’t reply. It would be useless to do so. What could he say? He already knew all the rumors about Brax. He already knew about most of the rumors about any given person at school, and whether or not they were true. It wasn’t deliberate, it wasn’t like he tried to eavesdrop on people’s conversations. Everyone just forgot he was there, and then had private conversations while he was in earshot.

“Well, I’ll see you around, I guess,” Torvald finally said. “If you want to talk or hang out sometime, you know how to reach me.” The words were innocent enough; the tone was still weird, though, like he was still jockeying for Narvin’s attention, like he thought this was a battle for his friendship.

Not that Narvin wanted friends, but it was a little gratifying to know that there were two people arguing over him like that. It wasn’t like it had ever happened before.

After Torvald walked away, Ace turned to Narvin, eyebrows raised. “You were  _ friends _ with that guy?” she asked, her voice so incredulous that it was almost funny.

“It was more that our parents are friends, so they decided we should, too,” Narvin muttered, but without so much annoyance in his voice. Maybe it was because she’d managed to get Torvald to go away, but he was feeling a bit more charitable towards her. He paused, then decided, what the hell. “Anyway, what was that about?”

“What?”

“Was that a thing that just happened? For real?” Narvin asked. “Are you sure this isn’t some weird movie or something? Were you just  _ arguing _ with Torvald over being friends with me?”

Ace grinned, showing her teeth. “Someone’s gotta be your friend, Narv, and I’ve decided you’re not too bad. A little bit like a cranky grandpa, but I have a cranky grandpa and he’s actually a lot of fun once you get to know him, and you seem cool, so why not? Although Torvald was right about the one thing,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “You can be a little bit boring. Just the whole self-righteous thing, like,  _ oh, I have to have a stick up my ass all the time or I will die! _ or,  _ yes, it’s vitally important that everyone follows the dress code at all times, even though it’s way stricter on girls than on boys and it’s kind of nonsensical, _ or,  _ if you run in the halls, I will bring my wrath upon you. _ Doesn’t it get tiring to be such a pain in the ass all the time?”

Okay, now he was getting a little annoyed at her. But annoyance was much better than whatever the fuck that other feeling had been, the one he’d been feeling when she’d been arguing with Torvald.

“You’re going to admit Torvald was right about something?” Narvin asked, tilting his head.

Ace tightened her ponytail. “Notice that old rat-stache isn’t here right now to hear it,” she replied. “Just because he’s right about some things doesn’t mean he has to  _ know _ that he’s right about some things.” She glanced at Narvin’s laptop, then back at him. “So,” she said, clearly changing the topic. “What’s that fanfiction thing you were reading?” She leaned forward, elbows on the table.

“I already told you, I don’t know,” Narvin said.

“C’mon, Narv, I’m a freshman, I don’t know the inside jokes at school yet, you’ve gotta tell me about them. What’s the fanfic about?”

“Honestly?” he said with a sigh, giving up. “Who even knows? It’s supposed to be based off of everyone at school, but no one actually knows who’s writing it, and everything’s ridiculous.”

“How do you know it’s based off of everyone at school?”

He sighed again, although it was a little closer to a groan. “Do you have to be this annoying?”

Ace considered this for a moment, then smiled brightly, nodded her head vigorously, and said, “Yep! Can you show me the fanfic?”

“What, like from the beginning?”

“Or whatever you were reading when I walked in,” Ace replied. “I’m not picky. It looks like trash, and that means I have to read it.”

“Aren’t you a freshman?” Narvin asked, opening up his laptop and typing in his password. “Do you even know  _ how _ to read yet?”

“Nope!” Ace said proudly. “I’m totally illiterate. What is a word? Who knows? Not me! Sounds dangerous.”

Before he had time to think about it or stop it, Narvin found that the corners of his mouth had twitched upwards into what was possibly the world’s tiniest smile. As soon as he realized, of course, he wiped the smile from his face, but even though he didn’t think Ace had noticed, he was already berating himself. He wasn’t supposed to be having a good time. He certainly wasn’t supposed to be  _ smiling _ at being  _ annoyed _ by some little freshman.

“Uh,” said Narvin, scrolling up to the start of the chapter. “I wasn’t very far into it when you... _ interrupted _ me, but it’s shaping up to be a dumpster fire.”

Ace peered at the screen and read the first few lines, snickering. “So are Brax and Romana — sorry, Birving Axiatel and Ramona — the main characters?”

“I guess, although everyone makes appearances. There’s Blandred, Farkle, Livia’s been turned into Olivia, Torvald is now Brovald, Leela’s Lulu...it’s pretty easy to figure out. Whoever wrote it wasn’t all that creative.”

“Who are you? Oh, wait–” Ace paused, her eyes still on the screen. “You must be Marvin. Why are you holding hands with Lulu?” She cast him a sidelong glance. “Is there something going on between you and Leela that I should know about?”

“If  _ something _ is slang for  _ an intense dislike and healthy amount of fear, _ then yes,” Narvin replied, rolling his eyes. “The author’s been hinting at this for the past few updates. Last chapter, there was a dramatic breakup scene where Lulu found out that her boyfriend, Blandred, was cheating on her with Brovald.”

Ace burst out laughing at that. “Seriously? Man, I have to read this from the beginning. Do you have my phone number? Let me give you my phone number, and then you can send me the link. God, that’s good. That’s as good as this ridiculous declaration of love. I’m telling you, Brax is the author.”

“And I’m telling you, I don’t think he is. Brax wouldn’t do anything to make himself seem stupid, and this would make him seem really stupid.”

“Nah.” Ace shook her head. “Trust me. Brax is the type of person to tell everyone he listens to like, boring classical music because he thinks it makes him sound cultured and whatever, and then he goes home and listens to, I don’t know, Britney Spears or something.” She grinned. “I don’t know, I just think it would be funny to think of Brax writing this stuff. Like this:  _ oh, Birv.” _ She burst into laughter again, and this time, Narvin joined her.

The librarian shot them another dirty look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big Finish, we need more of Narvin and Ace’s friendship.


	9. Big Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I keep forgetting to write. The readers can have a little more Brax POV...as a treat.

Over the space of the third week back in school, a number of big things happened. Braxiatel figured it was because there hadn’t yet been any significant drama, and people were starting to get antsy, so they had to create something big. He also was starting to get annoyed, because his reputation for being terrified was starting to be supplanted by his reputation for having an unrequited crush on Romana, and he didn’t want  _ that _ to be the thing he was remembered for. He wanted to be known as the kid who managed to get another kid into juvenile detention, or the kid who robbed an art museum, or that weird kid who wore the suit and carried the briefcase, or the kid with the really awesome mustache. Out of all those things, the mustache appeared to be the only one that was impossible to achieve.

The first big thing, of course, was that he’d done something that pained him, down to his very core: he had shaved. This might not have been a big deal for some, but he had a certain amount of pride in his appearance, and he wanted nothing more than to be able to grow facial hair. In particular, he wanted a really awesome mustache. Unfortunately, genetics were being just plain rude, and the mustache, which he had been working on for months, was still sparse and not very good.

Of course, Brax was patient. He was willing to wait years for a good mustache, if need be. No, the thing that had tipped it over the edge was a group of freshmen. He didn’t mind the group of freshmen so much; they were all nice enough kids. Ace had already started hanging out with Romana and Leela, because she apparently also had been friends with Theta. (This didn’t surprise Brax in the slightest, actually. Theta had somehow been an incredibly popular person at school, befriending anyone and everyone. Brax had never been able to keep all his friends straight, and had long since stopped trying. He knew Romana, Leela, and Ace, and he knew a girl named Bernice who went to a private school — St. Oscar’s — a few towns over, in Dellah. He honestly didn’t know how Theta had met her, and it wasn’t like he was about to ask his brother and find out, but somehow they shared her as a friend, too. His little brother’s popularity never ceased to amaze and annoy Brax. Theta was an annoying little crustacean whose aesthetic sense was somewhere between bohemian and bum. Honestly, Brax didn’t even know where he’d found that scarf.)

But Ace had been with some of her fellow freshmen, all tiny and young and annoying, and in front of all of her classmates, she had gone up to Brax and told him that his mustache reminded her of Torvald’s.

Brax  _ liked _ Ace. She was a good enough kid. She was smart and loud and brash and was probably a pyromaniac, but since Brax was a kleptomaniac, it wasn’t like he was about to judge her for it. But Torvald was quite possibly the sleaziest person in the entire school. He had a rat-stache that he’d grown over the summer — which Brax now realized, with a pang, was exactly what he himself had done — and he went to conservative rallies because he thought being actively political would get him a girlfriend, and his parents were conservative. He always looked like he hadn’t showered in two weeks, and every time Brax looked at him, he was reminded of a character in a book he’d read, who had a severe acne problem and whose face was constantly shiny from all of the acne cream he put on it. Being compared to Torvald was quite possibly the worst insult Brax had ever received in his entire existence. He could handle being called any variety of rude names; in fact, he rather prided himself on the fact that he was one of the only people who could regularly get Narvin to swear. Being compared to Torvald was much worse than being called a bastard, or a fucker, or even a “useless, pretentious potato.” (One of Darkel’s more creative insults, after he’d beaten her in debate.)

Being compared to such a lowlife was humiliating. Of course it was. How could it be anything _ other _ than abject humiliation, especially around a bunch of freshmen? But Brax didn’t let his emotions get the better of him. He wanted to puff himself up indignantly and say something like, “How  _ dare _ you?” 

He did not do this.

Instead, he gave a small smile, one that he knew wouldn’t reach his eyes. He knew his eyes would remain cold, impersonal. “Very funny,” he replied, keeping his voice light, like this wasn’t the most grievous insult ever thrown at him. 

But judging by the way the other freshmen were laughing about it, Ace was right. The insult was accurate, and so there was no good way to react without humiliating him further. He was a junior! It shouldn’t have been possible for freshmen to degrade him like that!

And, if that wasn’t enough, Romana walked past, saw the group standing there, laughing. Brax’s ears felt very hot, and he hoped he wasn’t  _ blushing. _

“What’s so funny?” Romana asked suspiciously.

One of the other freshmen, an athletically-inclined boy named Annos, replied. “Ace was just saying how Braxiatel’s mustache looks like Torvald’s,” he said, grinning widely, clearly finding this very amusing.

Romana turned her head so that she could look at Brax and inspect his mustache. She was silent for a few moments, and then she shrugged. “I hadn’t noticed before,” she said, “but now that you’ve mentioned it…” Her voice trailed off, and, to his horror, Brax had seen her mouth quirk into a tiny smile. An actual smile, not a sarcastic one. She found it funny, too.

That day, he’d gone home, and shaved off his mustache. Not that there was much to shave. It wasn’t like he’d been all that successful in growing it. It would be fine. Maybe he’d try growing one in college, once he didn’t have to deal with annoying freshmen in a small town.

Big thing number two happened, and actually was multiple big things combined, but it happened the day after the mustache incident. Braxiatel decided that big thing number two was this: Romana had asked him to be her date to homecoming.

It was a little over two weeks away, and Brax had been agonizing as to how to ask Romana to be his date without making it seem like he cared all that much about homecoming. Because he didn’t, really. It was a football game and a dance. That was it, really. And a week of craziness leading up to it, but Brax didn’t participate in those things. He liked to think he was above all that.

Romana asked him during one of their study dates. These had turned into regular study sessions, in which they worked on homework for the classes they shared, drank overpriced coffee, and complained. Usually about Darkel. And yes, Romana had presented her proposition in a less-than-romantic fashion, because Romana wasn’t much of a romantic, he’d learned. (Her favorite piece of art was the Mona Lisa because, apparently, she thought it was funny that it didn’t have eyebrows.)

They had sat down at the table that had quickly become  _ their _ table, because they always sat at it, and they’d both taken sips of their coffee (although this time Brax had gotten tea), and then she set down her cup. But instead of getting out her school things, she placed both hands on the table, palms down, looked over at Brax, and took a deep breath.

“I have a question,” she said, sounding very serious.

“Shoot.”

“Do you want to go to homecoming with me?” she asked, still sounding serious. It came out less like a question and more like a command.

“Anything for you, Romana,” Brax immediately replied. He could feel his heart start beating faster, and he wondered when the Panopticon had gotten so warm. He hadn’t even thought about his answer before it came out, and he couldn’t even mentally berate himself for how desperately giddy he sounded, because he was so caught up in being desperately giddy. It’s not every day that the girl of your dreams asks you out.

Romana flashed him a grateful smile. “Thanks, Brax,” she said, and she took her hands off the table and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I knew I could count on you. I just need a friend to be my homecoming date, because I heard that someone was bringing Prydon as their date, but like, as a friend, and I can’t handle that right now.”

“Prydon?” Brax asked. He didn’t know any Prydons. He wondered if Romana had an embarrassing ex. He hoped not. He’d been friends with her for years, and she’d never dated anyone in that time. At least, not that he was aware of.

“Yes,” she said, letting out a tired noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “You remember last year, that class trip out to the capital?”

Brax rolled his eyes. “I remember what I was there for,” he said. “It was hardly my fault that I was sent home early.”

“You tried to steal something from the National Portrait Gallery,” Romana replied, deadpan.

“And that’s not my fault,” Brax insisted. “They shouldn’t just  _ leave _ incredible works of art hanging around.”

“You do know that’s the point of an art museum, right?” Romana asked. “I hope you never step foot inside like, the Louvre or something. If anyone I know is destined to become an international art thief, it’s probably you.” She paused. “Anyway, there was another class trip from the area that was there at the same time as us, and we kept bumping into them, and Prydon was this creepy kid who wouldn’t leave me alone. It was after you’d been sent home, I was bored and annoyed, and only had Leela and  _ Narvin, _ if you can believe it, and because our schools are from the same area, the teachers got together and were like, ‘Hey, we should join forces and let the groups combine and intermingle and whatever,’ because that wasn’t probably illegal at  _ all. _ And I got separated from Leela and Narvin and had to spend the afternoon with  _ Prydon. _ You know I don’t say this lightly, but if anyone can be described as being a complete and total dick, it’s him.”

Brax winced sympathetically, even as his heart sank. He was just there to keep another guy away. Of course, since she’d turned to him, though, that meant he did still have a chance with her. He’d just have to be the perfect date at homecoming. And then she’d realize she was in love with him, and they’d date, and it would be fine. Of course, if she just wanted to be friends, too, that would be fine. The only reason Brax hadn’t confessed his feelings to her (although he tried to make them as obvious as possible) was because he didn’t want to ruin their friendship.

“Wait,” he said slowly. “Wasn’t that the guy who tried to attack Narvin last year?”

Romana rolled her eyes. “Yeah. He and Leela finally found us, thank  _ God, _ and even though I think they were ready to murder each other, Narvin actually stood up for us. He basically tried to start talking to Prydon, distract him or something, and Prydon just snapped. He started trying to attack Narvin, and after that, he was sent home, and the chaperones decided that maybe we shouldn’t hang out with the other school group.” 

“Wasn’t Narvin hurt, though? I thought he was hurt.”

Romana snorted. “I mean, yes, Prydon got a few punches in before Leela and I and some classmate of his managed to drag him back, but Narvin was fine. Avoided me and Leela like the plague for a long time, but that’s nothing new.”

“So I’m your date for homecoming so that you can avoid Prydon,” Brax said, sighing heavily. 

She lightly smacked his arm. “And I enjoy spending time with you, stupid,” she said, an unspoken  _ obviously _ hanging in the air. “If I have to have a date for homecoming, I’d choose either you or Leela, and Leela’s got her  _ boyfriend.” _

“Why do you hate Andred so much?” Brax asked. It wasn’t like he had a huge love of the boy, but he didn’t understand what Romana had against him, other than the fact that Leela was dating him, and so couldn’t devote all her time to being Romana’s friend. And that seemed remarkably selfish, for Romana.

This, by the way, was the segue into big thing number three, but at the time, Brax hadn’t known, he’d just been trying to change the subject, because he didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about being Romana’s friend-date to homecoming.

Romana paused, then let out a sigh. She was very good at sighing, Brax thought, almost wistfully. When she sighed, she sounded like a world-weary political leader trying to prevent the globe from descending into nuclear war, and not like a sixteen-year-old who didn’t approve of her friend’s boyfriend.

“I mean,” she said, her fingers subconsciously finding the end of one of her braids and playing with it, “Andred’s never been  _ bad, _ I guess, but he’s never been  _ great, _ either. Leela could just do so much better.”

“Not in this town, she couldn’t,” Brax muttered. It was a well-known fact that the vast majority of Gallifrey’s citizens were xenophobic. They actually were many things ending in  _ phobic, _ but xenophobia seemed to be one of the most prevalent.

Romana glared at him, then relented. “You’re probably right, but Leela doesn’t see things the way you and I do. She’s  _ happy _ with Andred, and not because she’s settled for less. She actually likes him, thinks that he’s fantastic, all of that.”

“If she’s happy, leave it alone,” Brax said. “Simple as that. You think she’s out of his league — and you’re probably right — but if Leela’s happy, let her be. She gets enough grief from everyone else at school.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Sure, Leela’s happy, and if it were just down to that, I’d let her be happy, but I really think she needs to break up with him.” She glanced around the Panopticon, then leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Andred has been acting really oddly since July. You know how all last year and the year before that, he was devoted to Leela?”

Brax nodded.

“Well, starting in July, he started randomly cancelling their ‘study sessions.’” Romana didn’t make air quotes around  _ study sessions, _ but her tone changed, becoming suddenly sarcastic, and it was clear that she didn’t think much studying actually happened during those sessions.

“And? Maybe he had a job, or unexpected schedule conflicts, or something.” It was unusual for Brax to argue with Romana, and honestly, he didn’t know why he was even doing it. He much preferred Romana to Andred, who was pretty much just a boring jock: harmless, good-looking in an athletic sort of way, and not all that intelligent. Brax believed the term for it was  _ himbo. _

It didn’t change the fact, though, that Brax had no clue why he was suddenly defending Andred. It didn’t make any sense. The only way he could explain it was that Romana occasionally got a little bit… tunnel-visioned. She thought Leela was too good for Andred, and she wasn’t going to rest until she had evidence that the boy was bad. Brax was trying to provide a little perspective.

Romana just looked at him for a moment before responding. “He had schedule conflicts almost every week? In the middle of summer? And he never even tried to reschedule the study sessions?” She let out another sigh. “You weren’t talking to Leela about these things. I was. She was so upset whenever he cancelled on her, but she never brought it up, because he  _ always _ had some sort of explanation, and she  _ trusted _ him, so she just let it happen.”

“If he had explanations, why are you so upset about it? If anything, it’s Leela who should be upset, and if she’s fine, maybe you should leave it alone.”

Romana shot him a glare. “Dammit, Brax, whose side are you on?” she retorted. “It’s like you  _ approve _ of Andred or something!”

“Listen, if Andred gives any proof that he’s doing something bad, I’ll be the first to say that you were right,” he assured her. “I just don’t think we should jump to conclusions without any evidence. What would Leela say if she knew you were itching to find a reason they should break up?”

She was silent for a long moment, looking at the table. She took a sip of coffee and began rummaging in her backpack, getting out her school things. “Brax,” she finally said, her tone suddenly completely different. He knew that voice; she was going to ask him for a favor. And he would agree to it, because he couldn’t say no to Romana.

“Yes, dear?” he replied, hoping she wouldn’t smack him on the arm for the term of endearment.

Instead of smacking him, she rolled her eyes. “You know all the gossip, right?” Her voice was weirdly sweet, like she was trying to flatter him into agreeing to do something for her. And knowing Romana, the something could very possibly be illegal.

“I do not know all the gossip,” he corrected her. “But I do know someone who knows all the gossip.”

(Or, well, he was pretty sure this person knew all the gossip. The person didn’t like to confide in Brax, but Brax was pretty sure he could get whatever information he wanted out of this person.)

“You wouldn’t be able to find some dirt on Andred, would you?” Romana asked. Her voice was surprisingly petulant.

“Romana…” Brax said tiredly. His hand went to his upper lip, only to find smooth skin, not the sparse hairs of a half-grown mustache.

Her blue eyes got big. “Come on, Brax.”

_ “Fine.” _ Brax finally relented, leaning back in his chair and shutting his eyes. “But don’t get mad at me if there’s nothing going on. You  _ could _ just be jealous that you have to share Leela with someone.”

She snorted. “I am  _ not _ jealous!”

Brax raised an eyebrow. “Ah. Of course not. I would be a fool to suggest such a thing. You never get jealous of anyone or anything.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

Big thing number four was a direct result of big thing number three. (And really, Brax didn’t know if big thing number three counted as a big thing, but it was certainly the setup of big thing number four, but it was sort of its own thing, so Brax was classifying it as its own Big Thing.)

Big thing number four was that Brax successfully convinced Narvin to do something for him  _ without _ bribes or blackmail. It was an astonishing moment, one of the highlights of Brax’s long career of convincing people to do things. (He said it was a long career — and it was, for him. He was sixteen, though, so it wasn’t  _ actually _ a very long time. He’d just gotten good at manipulation really quickly.)

The day after their study date (that wasn’t a date, according to Romana), Brax deliberately bumped into Narvin after school. He’d told Romana he knew someone who knew all the gossip, and he’d been serious about it. The problem was, he didn’t know for a fact that Narvin knew all the gossip. He might have read the situation all wrong. Narvin gave the impression of living under a rock, but Brax had come to the conclusion that this was a cover, and Narvin actually actively kept track of everything going on at school. Nothing ever took Narvin by surprise; if anything, he seemed to know about most things before they blew up in everyone else’s faces. The thing was, this was  _ Narvin. _ The kid had been raised in one of those insanely strict homeschool environments for most of his life, and who knew what that did to a person.

But the key to making everyone  _ think _ you know everything is pretending that you  _ do _ know everything. Brax knew that. So when he went up to Narvin after school, walking side by side with him along the sidewalk, he didn’t let any of his doubts show.

“Narvin!” he said, his voice overly enthusiastic, like it always was when he greeted someone.

“What do you want, Braxiatel?” Narvin asked, his face arranged in an expression that was very carefully cultivated to make him look dead inside.

“Why must I want  _ anything _ other than your companionship?” Brax asked, throwing an arm around Narvin’s shoulders, filling his voice with an air of jovial camaraderie that he wasn’t sure that he truly felt. “Truly, Narvin, your constant suspicions pain me to no end.” He put a hand on his heart. ”How can you live with that on your conscience?”

“I’ll survive,” Narvin said shortly. “Now stop touching me.”

Brax obligingly dropped his arm from the other boy’s shoulders.

Narvin glanced at him suspiciously. “Do you really just want to spend  _ time _ with me?” he asked. Brax couldn’t tell whether he sounded shocked or annoyed. Possibly both.

Only Narvin would be shocked and/or annoyed at the idea of people wanting to spend time with him.

He allowed a chuckle. “Of course not. You were right; I do want something.”

Narvin glared at him.

“You see, I have this… problem. I have a client–”

“You’re sixteen.”

“Alright, a  _ friend, _ then,” Brax corrected reluctantly. “My friend wants information. And I think you can provide it for me.”

“And you can’t just get it yourself?”

Brax sighed, the long, melodramatic sigh of someone who has practiced his sigh in front of the bathroom mirror. “People don’t  _ trust _ me. I don’t know why.”

“Possibly the fact that you’re notorious for blackmailing people?” Narvin pointed out, matter-of-fact.

“Must you always point out the  _ truth?” _ Brax asked. “It’s really annoying. Anyway, as I was saying, my client–”

“Your friend.”

“My  _ client,” _ Brax said, a little louder, “would like information about one of our classmates. It won’t be used for any nefarious purposes. After all, my client–”

“Your friend?”

“My  _ client.” _ Brax raised his voice again. “My client has a much stricter moral compass than I. While I wouldn’t hesitate to use information for blackmail purposes, I think I could be a trustworthy go-between for you and my client, since I have no personal stakes in the matter. I’m not interested in this information, and therefore I won’t use it for any reasons of my own.”

“And why would  _ I _ know any of the information you’re looking for?” Narvin asked, sounding annoyed. He usually sounded annoyed, though, so Brax ignored it.

“People don’t necessarily trust you,” Brax admitted. “That much is true. But people also forget about you. I’d be willing to bet you overhear at least ninety-five percent of the drama that goes down around school firsthand. Even though you’re a social recluse who hates people.”

“And why do you think I’d  _ remember _ any of the information I overhear, if I even overhear it?”

Brax wondered briefly if Narvin was considering a career in politics. He was very good at denying things without actually denying them. “Like I said, you’re a social recluse who hates people. You don’t have anything better to do than obsessively categorize other people’s interesting lives to make up for the fact that yours is so dull.”

Narvin glared at him. Brax beamed back, beatific.

“I’m not saying I’ll do it,” Narvin said slowly, “But if I did, who am I supposed to be finding information about?”

“You know Andred? Leela’s boyfriend?”

Narvin nodded.

“Him. See if you can find any dirt on him.”

“Did Leela put you up to this?”

Brax looked at him askance, stopped walking, and put his hand on Narvin’s shoulder, turning the other boy so they were facing each other. “You understand that I must preserve my client’s anonymity,” he said. “Just like I’m preserving your anonymity to my client. I’m the only one who knows you’re an insatiable gossip.”

“Now, wait just a minute–!” Narvin started to say, but Brax had already turned around and was walking away.


	10. Anxious Propositions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends new chapter time!!!

Now that he’d texted Brax and told him that he’d tutor Leela, Narvin was starting to get panicky. He couldn’t just turn around and bail now, though, even if agreeing in the first place had been a bad decision, possibly the worst of his life, what had he been  _ thinking _ when he agreed to this? He’d already told his parents he’d stopped tutoring an unnamed classmate, and they were being weirdly involved in his life right now. And  _ that _ was probably Romana’s fault, actually, because Romana had insisted he go  _ bowling _ with her and Brax and Ace, and Narvin never did anything with friends (primarily because he didn’t have them), so it was suspicious to his parents.

Now he’d have to come up with some excuse to stay out later than his parents usually were okay with, and he’d already been told by Brax that he was supposed to tutor Leela twice a week, and everything was just a mess. His parents would find out that he had agreed to tutor an immigrant girl and there would be a huge fight, and he’d be punished or kicked out of the house for a day or two or something. And he didn’t have any friends he could stay with, so he’d be stuck. Well and good.

And in the meantime, he’d agreed to find dirt on Andred. For Leela, he assumed. Why was everything in his life suddenly centering on that girl? First tutoring, then digging up gossip on her boyfriend? Next he’d be  _ friends _ with her or something. He shuddered at the thought.

He’d been hoping for a boring year, he really had. He just wanted to go to school, do his homework, and get good grades. The less he called attention to himself in any aspect of his life, the better. He didn’t want friends or even friendly acquaintances. He didn’t want his parents suddenly deciding they needed to get involved in his social life. And if he started exhibiting symptoms of  _ friendship, _ they definitely would.

The thing about his parents was that, while they weren’t the  _ worst, _ they certainly weren’t great. As long as they assumed Narvin led a boring life, they stayed out of it. They were proud that their son was such an exemplary person, they said, that they’d trained him well enough that they didn’t have to worry about him. They could trust him, they said. But if he tried making friends with people who weren’t approved by his parents, all that supposed trust was out the window, and it was like he was six and an idiot.

So, no. Narvin really didn’t want friends, if only for that reason. It also helped that he either hated or was annoyed by (or in some cases, both) the entire school. The only people he could sometimes tolerate for extended periods of time were Romana and now Ace. And he really didn’t want to spend too much time with them, either.

Unfortunately, Ace had apparently decided that they were best friends, because she was now hanging out with him, whether he liked it or not. She would go to the library with him after school, she would sit with him at lunch, she would go out of her way to talk to him between classes.

Narvin was also slowly realizing, much to his horror, that he looked forward to this. He didn’t  _ want _ friends, he kept telling himself. They invited so much extra stress and unnecessary socialization. It would make so much more sense to just ignore all of these annoying idiots who wouldn’t leave him alone.

Except he couldn’t. Because he’d agreed to tutor Leela. And he’d agreed to spy on her boyfriend, probably  _ for _ her. And Romana was threatening to include him in some social activity over the weekend. And Ace was friends with them, too, so even if he were just friends with Ace, he would end up being one of  _ them. _ He liked being neutral in this weird, dramatic high school that was so divided up into groups that it was less like cliques and more like warring factions.

He lifted up the straps of his backpack from his shoulders for a few seconds, relieving them of the stress of carrying his books, then went outside to the football field. There were the jocks, of course, Andred and Hallan and Annos and Henzil and Janartis and Maxil. To his surprise, Torvald was out there, too, watching the practice from the sidelines. Oh, he shouldn’t have been surprised, he realized, his mind filtering through all the things he needed to add to his spreadsheet. Torvald and Andred had suddenly become friends, the other jocks were annoyed by this, and so was Leela. Maxil also was annoyed because he was a senior and had been passed up as captain of the football team for Andred, who was only a junior. And Hallan was sulky, but that was just because he was always sulky, Narvin was pretty sure. He’d heard a rumor that he’d had a summer girlfriend who’d dumped him, but Hallan insisted that he hadn’t even liked the girl, anyway, which really didn’t endear him to anyone else.

Narvin tentatively walked up to Andred. It was stupid to worry, he knew; after all, Andred had always been a decent guy, right? 

Sure enough, Andred gave him a friendly — if impersonal — grin. “Are you lost or something?” he asked lightly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you outside by choice.”

“Ha, ha,” Narvin replied, showing no emotion. “I was wondering where your girlfriend is, actually.”

Andred raised his eyebrows. “Why? I thought you hated her.”

“What makes you say that?” Narvin asked, trying and failing to sound innocent. He should have just stuck with annoyed. He could do annoyed. When he tried going for anything else, he began to sound slimy.

“Come on, Narvin, just because we aren’t friends doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about you. I see how often you dress code her, and I  _ distinctly _ remember you calling her a ‘stupid, ignorant, immigrant’ back in like, freshman year.” He paused. “Actually, kudos to you — I think you’re probably the only person to be able to use the word ‘stupid’ and make it actually sound like a cutting insult. Everyone else just sounds like they’re channeling their inner ten-year-old.”

“Thanks,” said Narvin. “I think.”

“So why do you need to find Leela?” Andred asked again. “Because I’m busy. Practice starts in like two minutes, and we need to beat the Monans in the homecoming game.”

Narvin wanted to argue that point, since sports were objectively the biggest waste of time in high school. Andred wouldn’t ever end up a famous football player, or a famous athlete of any kind. He didn’t have great grades, partially because he spent so much time obsessing over sports. And in the long run, there was literally nothing special about winning the homecoming game. Instead of engaging in this debate, however, he said, “Well, uh, you see — your girlfriend — I mean, Leela — she, uh, dropped something back inside and I thought I should, uh, return it to her.” 

For someone who never told the full truth about anything, Narvin really was a bad liar.

“You’re being nice?” Andred asked, and the shock in his voice was almost comical.

“Let’s say I’ve had a change of heart,” Narvin said, almost desperately. “Do you know where she is?”

Andred laughed. “You’re so anxious about this, I’d almost be worried that you’re trying to steal my girl,” he said. “But, y’know, Leela doesn’t go for…” He looked Narvin up and down. “...you,” he finished, somewhat lamely. “Anyway, she’s probably at her house. She usually takes her dog for a walk sometime around now.” He gave Narvin an apologetic smile. “So I guess you’re stuck. If you wait around, she’ll be here for cross country practice in like, an hour, or you can just wait until tomorrow.”

Narvin smiled thinly, wishing he could be successfully intimidating. Like Brax. “Never mind, then,” he said, and walked away.

He needed to find Leela to discuss the  _ difficulties _ of tutoring her, between her crazy sports schedule and his overbearing parents. He’d told Brax he’d do it, so he was going to do it, no question about that (only mild-to-moderate complaining), but this was possibly the most he’d ever gone behind his parents backs, ever.

He pulled out his phone and began scrolling back through his texts with Brax. Did he really talk to him that much? There was no way there were this many texts between the two of them just in the time since school had started.

As he walked, he was so engrossed in what he was doing, that he didn’t even notice the tiny freshman boy until he’d bumped into him, sending the boy’s books flying. He looked up from his phone.

“I didn’t see you,” he said shortly, hoping that would suffice for an apology.

“It’s alright,” the boy said. He was slight and freckled and looked more like a lost twelve-year-old than a freshman. “Can you help me pick up the books, though?”

Narvin heaved a sigh, and bent down to help. He wasn’t  _ entirely _ evil.

“Thanks,” the boy said. He sounded relieved, and also nervous. “I’m Wynter, by the way,” he added. He looked like he wanted to stick out his hand for Narvin to shake it. “Aren’t you friends with Ace?”

“I suppose that depends on your definition of friend,” Narvin replied cautiously. Just because the boy was a terrified freshman didn’t mean he wasn’t potentially dangerous.

Oh, and now he was sounding weird like Brax again.

“Well, Ace says you two are friends, and she thinks you’re like a cool grandpa,” Wynter continued, sounding slightly less terrified. “You know, kind of old and crotchety, but not too bad overall?”

“I don’t think Ace actually knows me very well,” Narvin replied drily, “if that’s what she thinks about me.” He stopped gathering up papers for a moment and studied Wynter more closely. “I’ve seen you around,” he said slowly. “You’ve been insinuating yourself into what’s promising to be some nasty drama.”

Wynter paused. “What do you mean?” he asked, and he sounded nervous again.

“I mean Darkel and Romana hate each other and always have. Trying to stay on both their good sides will only end badly, unless you’re like me.” He handed Wynter one of the books. “Which you’re not.”

Wynter stood up and dusted himself off the best he could, holding the precarious pile of books in one hand. “Thanks for the advice, but I don’t think I’ll need it, actually,” he said, his voice surprisingly cold. “Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I’m actually really smart, and I’ll probably be able to graduate early.”

“Good for you,” Narvin said, emotionless. “When you get in over your head with asinine drama, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He gave a sarcastic smile. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

“Yeah,” said Wynter. “Thanks.” He didn’t sound grateful. Then, with a sudden change of tone, he offered an earnest, sincere smile. “Do you know where Janartis is? I’m supposed to be doing his homework so that he doesn’t fail chemistry, and–”

Narvin jerked his thumb behind him, in the direction of the football field. “He’s got practice.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks!” This time, he did sound grateful, and he began his hazardous journey to the field, clutching his stack of books and papers. As he walked away, he called over his shoulder, “It was nice meeting you!” and he almost sounded like he meant it.

Narvin waited until the younger boy was out of sight before letting out a sigh, one that he hoped fully conveyed exactly what he thought of this school and all the students therein. What was it Dante said?  _ Abandon all hope, ye who enter here? _ Well, that was how Narvin felt anytime he was forced onto the school grounds.

He continued on his way, making his way towards Leela’s house. He might be able to catch her before she had to leave for cross country practice. The more private this conversation, the better. If no one knew he was tutoring her, it would be very easy to drop the sessions if things went badly, and it would also have almost no chance of getting back to his parents that he was tutoring  _ that slutty immigrant, _ as they were so fond of saying. Narvin winced at the memory. 

Knowing his luck, of course, he’d both miss the chance to talk to Leela in private  _ and _ this would be the one day that his parents would actually go to the library to make sure he was studying there.

But when he got there, Leela was just leaving the house, her giant, terrifying dog on a leash, tongue lolling. It saw Narvin and immediately launched itself at him, half-dragging Leela across her front walk.

“Calm, K9!” Leela exclaimed, laughing. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail that was already halfway towards falling out completely, and she had changed into an outfit that so thoroughly broke the school dress code that Narvin had to stop and give himself a mental reminder that they were no longer at school, and Leela could dress however she wanted. A voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like his mother reminded him of what his parents always said about her, on the occasions that they saw her.

But there was something nice, actually, about seeing her in her element, in clothes that she wanted to wear, with her (giant, terrifying) dog, laughing and relaxed. She really did look very nice, with the way her top exposed her stomach, which was toned from all the sports she did, and the way that one necklace that always wore complemented the colors of her shirt, and the way that she seemed happy in a way that he never saw at school.

She looked up to see what K9 was trying to dash towards, and the laughter stopped, and the smile faded, and Narvin could actually see her shoulders stiffen. He ignored the way his stomach sank, just a tiny bit, at her reaction, and instead held his hand up, like he was about to wave, then changed his mind at the last second and dropped it.

“What are you doing here?” Leela asked, her voice practically dripping with venom. She held the leash fast in her hand, stopping K9 from reaching Narvin. Which was perfectly alright, actually, seeing as Narvin really didn’t want to go near that (giant, terrifying) dog.

He held up his hands, palms facing her, in what he hoped was a placating gesture. “Listen, Brax talked to me, and he said he would talk to you, too, about the whole tutoring thing,” he said, wondering how rude was too rude and how polite was too polite. He didn’t want to be nice to her, but he didn’t want to be mean. Leela was physically probably stronger than him, even if she was smaller.

“Yes,” she said, like the word was a question. She was still glaring at him, and her dog was still panting excitedly and pulling at the leash in its attempts to slobber on him.

“I’d be — I don’t know if _ willing _ is the right word, but certainly  _ able _ — to tutor you in geometry,” Narvin continued, trying to sound sincere while still keeping an eye on her dog.

“Thank you,” Leela said stiffly, uncertainly. She was clearly trying to work out if that was an insult or not. “Brax said something about it. I do not see why you are here, though. We did not plan anything, and I am busy.” She continued walking, past Narvin, where the dog only jumped on him once and slobbered on him only marginally.

“Wait!” Narvin said suddenly. It came out like he was desperate, he realized, and cursed his inability to perfectly control his emotions under high anxiety.

She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him, flyaway red hairs framing her face. “What is so important that you cannot talk to me at school?” she asked, sounding less angry, but more annoyed. 

Well, Narvin could deal with annoyed. He was king of being annoyed. Dealing with other annoyed people was easy.

He crossed his arms in front of his chest, a step away from hugging himself.  _ “Listen,” _ he said, and he didn't sound desperate anymore, he sounded  _ urgent, _ there was a difference. “I wanted to go work on my homework, but–”

Leela snorted. “Nerd.” The word sounded strange in her accent, like it was an actual insult and not some childish name that Narvin had stopped getting upset by as early as fourth grade.

“I wasn't asking for your opinion on it,” he said, letting out a loud exhalation that was one step short of a sigh. “I'm trying to tell you that I don't actually want to ruin your day, nor do I want you to ruin mine.”

“What do you want, then?” Leela asked, turning around to fully face him, hands balled into fists and resting on her hips.

“That's what I'm  _ trying _ to tell you,” Narvin replied, keeping his voice as close to calm as he could. “You keep interrupting me.”

“Say what you must, then.”

Narvin took a deep breath, and Leela rolled her eyes. “I don't know how this tutoring thing is going to work, because you’ve got your crazy sports schedule, and I can’t let my parents know I’m tutoring you.”

She raised her eyebrows at that. “This is where Ace would tell you to grow a pair, is it not?” she asked.

Narvin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Probably,” he agreed, “but you're not Ace, and neither you nor she knows anything about me or my parents.”

Leela wrinkled her nose, and Narvin almost smiled at that. He didn’t think he'd ever seen her do something like that before, and it was almost endearing. Almost.

“I know many things about you, Narvin,” she protested, her nose still wrinkled. “I know that you are a junior, and you do not like anyone or anything, and I know that you dislike me specially, and you are annoying and obsessed with how long my shorts are. I also know that you have no friends and that you do not wish to have friends. You are rude and arrogant and think only of bad things.” Her face had cleared as she spoke, and by the time she finished, a devilish smile was playing at the corners of her mouth. She was clearly enjoying being rude.

“You think you're so clever, but you're the one who needs  _ my _ help,” Narvin retorted. As comebacks go, he knew it wasn’t very good, but in his defense, he was still feeling very anxious. “Listen. Is there a way I can tutor you so that literally no one else knows?”

“Brax would know,” Leela pointed out.

Narvin let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, I know, but other than him no one can know. My parents would kill me if they found out I was tutoring you.” He paused, then added, “Look — do you have to make things so difficult? If I didn’t know any better, you’re just trying to make my life miserable.”

“I am,” Leela replied, her face straight. “Making you miserable makes me happy. You would not wish for me to be unhappy, would you?” 

“I thought I hated you especially,” Narvin retorted. “I should be making  _ your _ life miserable, not the other way around.”

(Later, he would reflect that this was perhaps one of the oddest arguments he’d ever had with anyone in his life, Irving Braxiatel included. If someone had told him back in sixth grade that going to public school would result in him bickering with a girl he hated about who should be making whose life more miserable, he would have laughed in their face. Or not. He was a very sullen sixth grader, actually. He probably would have ignored the person and petulantly complained in his journal later that day.)

“I need to take K9 on his walk,” Leela finally said, an air of finality in her voice, like the conversation was over. “You can always sneak out and come to my house in the night?” And she walked away, ignoring the way Narvin’s face turned bright red (he could feel it, it was like he was burning) and the way he involuntarily began to sputter protests.

As Narvin walked to the library from her house, he reflected that this was, in fact, a good idea. He knew exactly how to get out of the house without waking up his parents — he could always climb out the window of his room, since their house was only one story in the first place, or he could go out the back door, which was relatively silent, or he could go out through the attached garage. It was something he’d figured out back in eighth grade, after he first started realizing how unreliable his parents were. Just in case.

He’d never  _ used _ these methods to sneak out of the house. Narvin was, before anything else, a stellar child. He did his homework, kept his room clean, did his chores without being reminded, never snuck out, and didn’t swear. At least, not around his parents. But they’d remained in the back of his mind, and on a dog-eared page of his eighth grade journal, just as options. He could easily sneak out. The window in his parents bedroom faced the backyard, not the street, so it wasn’t like one of them could see him walking down the road if they happened to still be awake. It would be easy.

And then they’d never know that he was tutoring Leela, and no one else would know that he was tutoring Leela, and he’d be getting paid by Brax, and he’d be able to save up. Just in case. He wasn’t planning on getting on the bad sides of his parents before college at the very earliest, but he couldn’t exactly predict the future. Sometimes he wished he had a secret spy organization at his command, full of time-traveling spies who could tell him exactly what to avoid.

But that would be foolish. Like some sort of bad sci-fi plot.

He sent a quick text to Brax as he walked, asking for Leela’s number. He could start tutoring her as early as tonight, even. The more study sessions he had with her, the more he’d get paid, and the more he got paid, the safer he was.

Precisely five minutes after he texted Brax, he got a response. That was how Brax operated, he’d discovered. The mighty Irving Braxiatel couldn’t make it seem like he actually cared about the rest of the universe, so he waited precisely five minutes before responding to any texts. Narvin wondered if he timed it or something. Regardless, within five minutes, Narvin had a phone number and the advice to call Leela rather than text her, as she liked texting even less than she liked calling, and apparently she didn’t like calling all that much, either.

So Narvin called her. There was a moment of hesitation, where he considered backing out of tutoring her altogether, but in the end, he did it. He didn’t realize until afterwards just how fast his heart was beating, thump-thumping in his chest so fast it was making him feel sick.

That probably wasn’t normal.

“Hello?” Leela’s voice was tinny through his phone’s awful speakers.

Narvin grimaced at the sound of her voice. “Hi. Uh. This is Narvin.”

He hated phone calls. He never knew what to say.

“Is this important?”

“Listen — about tutoring — do late evenings sound good for you?”

There was a pause, then what sounded an awful lot like laughter. “Narvin,” Leela said, her voice crackling in his ear. “Are you going to sneak out for  _ this?” _ The noise that sounded like laughter started again. 

“It was your suggestion,” Narvin muttered defensively.

“Yes, I would like that,” Leela finally said. It didn’t sound like she had heard him. “I really would _ not _ like that, but my family says I need a tutor, and so I must have one. I would like you as my tutor even less, but Brax insisted…”

“You know I don’t want this, either,” Narvin began to say, but she interrupted him.

“You are the one  _ sneaking out _ to do this, Narvin,” she said again, clearly overcome with mirth. “I knew you did not have friends, but I did not realize you were so lonely!”

Narvin hung up before she could insult him any further.


	11. It's a (Study) Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update! I'm just vibing and having a good time, plus I have to make Narvin and Leela start becoming friends before a Big Thing, so I figured I should get a move on with that

Leela was very deliberately ignoring her phone.

She had it hooked up to a speaker, blaring music with a heavy, thumping bass that she could dance to, and was stretching while reading a dictionary. 

Contrary to popular belief at school, Leela did actually care about school. And she cared about being able to communicate with the people around her. People tended to ignore these facts, possibly because she didn’t spend all her spare time shoving these facts in their faces. 

And honestly, she probably wouldn’t be reading the dictionary just so she could communicate with people better if not for the fact that Brax couldn’t stop himself from using huge, polysyllabic words that made no sense to her. Romana was better about it, but even she would _slip up_ and use words that Leela couldn’t understand. It would be much better if Brax could speak without using words like _obfuscate_ and _pulchritude._ She wouldn’t have to spend precious free time poring over a dictionary.

Her phone, she knew, would have several confused texts waiting for her when she would finally go to check it. She’d already ignored a phone call from Narvin, and now she was ignoring his texts.

She really wasn’t looking forward to tonight.

They were having their second-ever study session, after the utter _fiasco_ (a new word she’d learned) of the first. And she’d told Narvin, via text, to climb the tree outside her bedroom and sneak in through her window. 

There was a good reason for this, actually. Well, maybe not the telling him via text part, but she did have a good reason for him to be sneaking in through her bedroom window. You see, she hadn’t actually told her parents about this.

It wasn’t that her parents weren’t nice or understanding or anything. They were. They were pretty decent, as far as parents went. But, well, they’d been bothering her about the tutoring thing, and she’d told them that she had a tutor already, and that they were meeting directly after school, between school and cross country practice, twice a week. And twice a week, she’d been going over to Andred’s house and making up for all the cancelled dates. Or rather, _he_ was making up for all the cancelled dates, since it was his own fault that they’d all been cancelled. 

She couldn’t understand it. Over the summer, he’d started cancelling their English study sessions and any dates they’d been planning. When they spoke in person, he was the perfect picture of apologetic, and he always found some sort of gift or planned a date to make up for everything, but that didn’t change the fact that he was cancelling on her more and more. Was it something she’d done? Did he want to break up with her? Was he mad at her for something? She wasn’t a naturally paranoid person, but even the thought that he might be cheating on her had crossed her mind. She’d discarded that notion, though, because Andred would be stupid to do something like that. Besides, news got around quickly in Gallifrey — the school was too small for drama to stay hidden for very long — and she’d never heard anything about Andred even hanging out with very many girls aside from her.

Regardless, she was spending her supposed geometry tutoring sessions with Andred, where they spent their time _not_ studying geometry in the slightest, and she and Narvin had already made plans for him to come to her house for these tutoring sessions.

She was glad her parents were heavy sleepers. Things could get awkward, especially if Narvin got loud and indignant. He was like that most of the time, in her experience, his stupid, annoying face turning the color of a raspberry that was just a few days from ripe and his big gray eyes almost bugging out of their sockets from shock or annoyance at something she’d said or done. She didn’t know why she annoyed him so much (although she suspected at least _some_ xenophobia; she’d met Narvin’s parents at school events once or twice, and they’d always looked at her with a disgusted expression stuck fast on their faces, like she smelled or something), but something about her seemed to send him into fits of apoplexy. (A word she’d learned from Brax, actually, when he’d been describing Narvin’s attitude towards her.)

Why Brax had decided Narvin should be her _tutor,_ she’d never know. All she knew was that she didn’t want to have to be tutored at all, let alone by this annoying, insufferable jerk who thought she was nothing but a stupid immigrant.

Most of all, though, she was worried that she’d end up enjoying it. She’d been talking to Ace, who seemed to have befriended Narvin, and the way Ace talked about him, he sounded almost _fun._ In all the time she’d known Narvin, she’d never known him to be even somewhat close to fun. If anything, he killed fun just by standing in its vicinity. But when Ace talked about him, she talked about dry, sarcastic humor — rather like Romana’s, Leela thought, only less bossy — and a surprising knowledge of what other students were getting up to, usually revealed in some kind of annoyed, tired fashion, like some kind of tired bureaucrat, not a sixteen-year-old boy. When Ace talked about him, he sounded like a cross between an old man and a lonely boy who just needed some friends.

Leela could understand that. And she really wished she couldn’t. The first step to not hating someone was by relating to them in some way, and if she started not hating Narvin, what would become of her?

Actually, that was Brax levels of dramatic and she knew it, but that didn’t stop her from being annoyed. She didn’t want to feel sorry for Narvin. She didn’t want to be empathetic towards him. She wanted to get good enough at geometry that she no longer needed a tutor, and then she’d never have to do anything with him ever again. That’s what she wanted.

She closed the dictionary, got up, cracked her back, and closed her eyes. There was something wrong with her speaker, she kept hearing this tapping noise. She crossed over to it and paused the music without checking her notifications, then turned off the speaker.

The tapping continued, getting more frantic.

Narvin was at her window, a panicked look on his face, insistently knocking, clearly both uncomfortable and upset. Which was perfectly alright with Leela.

She opened her window. “I am sorry, Narvin, I did not see you there,” she said, completely honest.

Narvin glared at her, clearly trying to look threatening as he nearly fell through the window into her room. His brown hair was mussed up, and there were two spots of pink in his otherwise pale cheeks that made him look almost adorable.

She had to stop her train of thought. This was _Narvin._ He was either slimy or insufferable or angry or annoyed. There was no _adorable_ Narvin. There was no _cute_ Narvin. She should not be looking at him glaring up at her and thinking of how cute he was, like a small child pouting up at her.

She returned the glare, because what else was she supposed to do? Say, “It is good to see you, Narvin, you look very adorable all angry after falling through my window”?

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.

“Hello, Narvin,” she began, and he continued glaring up at her, his gray eyes large and mistrustful. “You look very adorable from falling through my window.” She gave him a wide, innocent smile.

He got up, glare not leaving his face. If looks could kill, Leela would have had severe injuries, if not actual death. There was enough embarrassment in the glare to keep the injuries from proving fatal.

“I was sitting on that branch, tapping at your window, for–” He checked his watch. “–five minutes and thirty-two seconds. Approximately.” He dropped his backpack on the floor with a heavy _thud._ “And I get in here, through your window, per your instructions, I might add, and I look like an absolute fool…”

He was getting worked up now, Leela could tell, and she began to zone out, focusing instead on his shoelaces, which were mismatched: one was white and looked like it was the original lace for his high-tops, while the other was bright purple, a stark contrast against the dull white of the shoe. She wondered if the other lace broke, or if he deliberately chose to have a purple lace in one shoe. It seemed so unusual, so out of place for Narvin. Having something as wannabe-original as even mismatched shoelaces made him stand out from the dull persona he’d apparently created for himself.

“–and you have the _audacity_ to call me _adorable?”_ Narvin’s fury was reaching its peak. Here were all the classic symptoms of Narvin getting apoplectic. (Leela did like how that word felt on her tongue when she said it. _Apoplexy, apoplectic._ It felt so fun to say.) His eyes were huge, like they were trying to pop out of their sockets, and his entire face had turned the same shade of pink that his cheeks had been as he fell through the window, a pink that lay somewhere on the color wheel between bubble-gum and magenta. His hands were fidgeting with the hems of his sleeves, and Leela could see that this must be some sort of nervous habit, as the sleeves of his flannel were beginning to wear and fray even though the rest of it looked almost-new.

“It is a compliment, Narvin,” Leela said, biting her lip to keep a laugh from bubbling up. “Many people enjoy being told they look cute.”

“Cute is _different_ than adorable,” Narvin snapped. He opened his mouth, probably to continue informing her of his righteous ire, but she interrupted him.

“You are here to teach me geometry, are you not?” she asked. Narvin wasn’t a _bad_ person, she decided, with some amount of surprise, but he was _annoying._ Incredibly so. And there was the small matter that he hated her, so he was probably deliberately being extra annoying. Just to be mean. He was like that, she was sure, deliberately being a jerk to her, just because he hated her guts.

Well, if he got too bad, she could always bring K9 in. She’d seen how terrified Narvin was of her dog.

Narvin shut his mouth, opened his mouth, shut his mouth again, and glared at her, gray eyes narrowed. He was calming down; the color in his cheeks was fading, replaced with the usual unnatural paleness from spending all his time indoors, and he was looking less like an embarrassed fish. Finally, he opened his mouth again and said, “Then maybe we should get started, and stop making unnecessary comments about my appearance.”

“It was a _compliment,_ Narvin!” Leela said again, this time unable to keep a laugh from accompanying her. She’d known he’d react to it badly, but she hadn’t realized just how uncomfortable a compliment (albeit one deliberately said to make him uncomfortable) would make him. It was fantastic. She now had a surefire way of getting Narvin to leave her alone.

He ignored her, instead choosing to unzip his backpack and pull out a notebook. “Shall we get started?” he asked stiffly, holding the notebook like it might explode at any minute. “Only my parents don’t know I’m here, and I’d really rather keep it that way, so this needs to be timely…”

“Shut up, Narvin,” Leela said, crossing the room to grab her textbook, which was laying on the floor near her speaker, and the phone that she supposed was now safe to stop ignoring. “My parents do not know that you are here, either, but you do not see me crying about it.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You are paranoid.”

“I have _reason_ to be paranoid,” Narvin replied, his voice sounding surprisingly anxious. “You’ve never met my parents or you’d understand.”

She didn’t tell him that technically, she had met his parents, at various school events. Like freshman year, when Narvin had played clarinet in the school band, and they’d shown up to two of the football games to watch their son march, and she’d bumped into them both times, completely by accident. If Narvin found out that she had met his parents, he’d get even more anxious, and his anxiety levels were already so high that she was beginning to regret agreeing to this.

And, as they progressed through the tutoring session (really, Narvin was just helping her with her geometry homework), he didn’t seem to be getting any better. If anything, he seemed to be getting worse.

“Narvin,” Leela finally ventured, “are you alright?

It wasn’t that she cared in the slightest about Narvin’s comfort. She just wanted to get this over with, and that would be difficult, if not impossible, with Narvin hyperventilating next to her.

“What?” He glanced at her, then registered what she said, and he gave a shrug and a tiny, bitter-sounding laugh. “Oh, I’m _fine,_ don’t worry about me,” he replied, the sarcasm practically oozing from his voice into the air.

“You will not die,” Leela said firmly. She had no clue what she should do in the event that Narvin had something like a panic attack, nor did she have any clue what to say or do to calm him down before he reached that point. This was _Narvin._ He hated her, and she hated him. There was no reason to know.

“If my parents don’t kill me, your boyfriend probably will,” Narvin said. The words sounded thick coming out of his mouth. “Since I’m surreptitiously climbing through your bedroom window late at night. What must the neighbors think?”

She rolled her eyes. It was a bad, juvenile habit that she’d picked up from Romana. “I do not know what ‘surreptitiously’ means,” she replied, somehow managing to keep her voice haughty while admitting gaps in her knowledge. (Admitting gaps in her knowledge to _Narvin,_ which was without a doubt worse than just admitting she didn’t know something.) “But the neighbors do not know anything, and Andred does not know anything, and your parents do not know anything. You are being foolish, Narvin.”

“Stop projecting onto me,” Narvin muttered, but his shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, and the color was leaving his face again, so Leela considered this a job well done. If she’d known being rude would calm him down, she would have been ruder from the start. None of that ‘adorable’ business.

She cringed inwardly, thinking about it. She hadn’t _meant_ it! This was Narvin she was talking about. He wasn’t cute in any way, he was just annoyed and slimy and tired, somehow a mixture of sleazy government bureaucrat and office worker on the brink of a nervous breakdown from exhaustion. She wondered if he got enough sleep. He always seemed so _tired._

But he was annoying and mean and liked to dress code her because he actually cared about whether or not people followed the school’s slightly sexist dress code, so she wouldn’t feel too bad for him. He made her life miserable, she could make his life miserable. It was only fair.

She sighed without intending to.

Immediately, Narvin’s head jerked up. “What was that?” he asked, suspicion evident in his voice.

“Nothing,” Leela said. “You were talking about–”

“Am I _boring_ you or something?” he demanded. The color was returning to his abnormally pale face. He really did blush very easily, Leela reflected absentmindedly.

“You always bore me,” she replied, deciding to play things a little dangerously. She knew from experience that Narvin would do one of three things: he would either argue with her, insulting her and generally being a snarky little shit; or he would go silent, his mouth gaping open like a fish; or he would go off on a long rant about how she was a terrible, stupid, ignorant person.

“If only the feeling were mutual,” he grumbled. “Instead, I’m constantly in shock over how stupid you are.”

So he’d chosen the first option. Leela felt herself smile involuntarily –– this was the most fun by far. There was something endearing –– no, that wasn’t the right word, maybe _funny_ was better –– about Narvin gaping at her like a fish, and the ranting was never enjoyable, but she could have some fun with banter, even if she struggled with English.

“You call me stupid and yet you cannot come up with better insults than stupid,” she said, arching an eyebrow. The corners of her mouth were still quirked up. She hoped Narvin wouldn’t notice.

But when she looked at him, he looked almost like he was enjoying himself. His shoulders weren’t hunched up rigid around his ears, and the constant angry expression on his face had mellowed somewhat. He looked relaxed. Leela didn’t think she’d ever seen Narvin look relaxed before.

(She realized, of course, that he didn’t _actually_ look relaxed, but this was Narvin. Uptight for everyone else was relaxed for him, and uptight for him was anxiety attack for everyone else.)

“I was using small words so that you would understand,” Narvin shot back at her. “After all, if I called you an imbecile, you might not understand me, and then the insult loses all its meaning.”

“You take this so seriously,” she replied. “I do not take this seriously at all.”

He stopped talking then, his lips slightly parted, and ran a bewildered hand through his hair, messing it up slightly. It made him look younger. “...I don’t take this seriously,” he said, doubt edging his voice like gold-edged pages in the fancy edition of a book. “Not at all.”

She actually laughed at that. “You take everything seriously, Narvin. It is why Brax thought you would be a good tutor, I think.”

“Really?” He looked pleased. Proud, even. And then he remembered to be offended and/or disgusted by everything she said, and the annoyed expression came back. “But I don’t take everything seriously!” he added, sounding indignant. “You just seem to think I do.”

She patted him on the shoulder and he flinched away. “It is alright, Narvin,” Leela said, surprised by the words coming out of her mouth. “No one at school cares that you are always serious. It is something that we are all used to.”

“But I’m _not,”_ he insisted. “Everyone at school is just idiotic, so they think I’m always serious.”

“I am one of those people you are talking about.”

He grimaced and shot her a quick sideways glance. “My point stands.”

“You are in my house and so you are my guest,” Leela said pointedly. “Technically. If you were not, I would make you regret insulting me like that.”

“What, even though I’m tutoring you and you don’t have to pay a dime?” Narvin asked, the sarcasm in his voice palpable.

“That does not change the fact that you hate me and are very rude to me.” She pulled her hair tie out of her hair as she spoke, allowing red curls to tumble around her shoulders. Her ponytail had almost completely worked itself loose, anyway, so it wasn’t like taking it out did anything beyond prevent a headache when she would have to brush it all out in the morning.

Narvin sputtered. Leela didn’t think it was possible to sputter when you weren’t already speaking, but somehow, Narvin managed to do it. He made odd noises, like the beginnings of words only he didn’t finish any of the words, and he opened and closed his mouth, and made sounds that sounded almost like coughing. His eyes were wide, his eyebrows were raised, and the only indicator that he was perhaps not taking this seriously was the fact that his face remained pale.

(Really, Narvin was pale most of the time, which was perhaps why his face turned red so easily –– and so noticeably. She figured it was because he spent most of his time indoors, because he didn’t have any friends who might drag him places. It wasn’t just that he was pale, it was that it was the sort of pallor that you only saw on people who rarely saw the light of day. She wondered if the only time he ever went outside was to walk from school to the library. She’d have to do something about that, she decided, then realized with something like horror that that would mean she’d have to spend time with him doing something _fun._ Maybe she wouldn’t do something about that.)

As the hour progressed, Leela was surprised –– and not in a bad way –– by Narvin’s tutoring methods. True, he regularly insulted her, but it wasn’t anything beyond what she was used to. (And she insulted him back just as readily, so it wasn’t like she could complain about it.) But when he wasn’t insulting her, he was surprisingly good at what he was doing. She knew Narvin was smart, because he, Romana, Brax, and Darkel always seemed to be at the top of the class, but he never showed it. Possibly because he rarely interacted with people beyond getting annoyed. Now that the two of them were interacting in a way that didn’t lend itself towards getting ridiculously uptight about everything, he was almost nice. He wasn’t actually nice, because this was Narvin, and he wouldn’t be himself if he were actually nice, but he was almost supportive. 

When he wasn’t insulting her, of course.

He almost refused to climb through her window and back down the tree after they finished. He stood at her window sill, the window open all the way, the cool night air wafting in, and he gripped the edge so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Isn’t there any other way?” he asked. “I’m not particularly athletic, you know.”

She snorted. “I am not asking you to run a mile, Narvin,” she said. “But if you go out the normal way, you will have to deal with K9, which I know you do not want. And if K9 barks at you, because he often barks when he sees new people, it will wake my parents. And if my parents find out you are here, we both will be in trouble.”

“I thought your parents were supposed to be decent,” Narvin muttered.

“They are,” she countered. “But they also have rules. I do not think they have a rule about having strange boys in my bedroom, but that is because I have never had a strange boy in my bedroom before.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Aside from the last time I tutored you, of course.”

She rolled her eyes. “That does not count! And they did not know that took place in my bedroom.”

“With the door closed,” Narvin put in helpfully. He looked pained by the memory, and a faint pink was beginning to tinge his cheeks. She couldn’t help but grin at that. Brax had once referred to Narvin as an _old maid._ He’d had to explain what that meant to Leela, and she had been skeptical of the claim, but now that she was interacting with Narvin a bit more (more than she ever had, she was pretty sure), she was agreeing with him more and more. Everything Narvin said and did was _proper,_ even his arguing. He sat at least six inches away from her at all times, and was continually edging even farther back. He kept casting nervous glances at her closed bedroom door, and while she’d thought it was because of K9, she also knew he was terrified about being caught in her bedroom with her, even though they were clearly studying. He was a stickler for rules, and she was pretty sure he’d memorized all of the school rules, because she’d once heard him recite them at someone who was ignoring him. 

Basically, Narvin was an annoying little toad, and even though she probably could have found a way to get him out of her house the normal way without alerting her parents or K9, it was much more fun to make him crawl in and out of her window. She was beating him at his own game; if Narvin was going to insist on secrecy, she’d be so secret that he had to climb through the window.

“You must climb out the window and down the tree,” Leela said cheerfully. “It is the only way.”

He gave her a _look,_ one of those deadpan expressions that said he thought she was lying or overreacting, but wasn’t going to take the time to call her out verbally. And then, to her delight, he grimaced and began climbing out the window.

Maybe this would be fun after all.


	12. Dancing Queen, Young and Sweet, Only, uh, Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait, hope you enjoy!  
> some warnings for drug references later in the chapter.

Brax was getting worried. He thought he’d made an accurate assessment of Narvin. But Narvin hadn’t yet turned in any alarmingly bad Andred gossip. There was a possibility, he reflected, that Andred just wasn’t a bad person, of course, but all evidence to date suggested that every single person attending Gallifrey High School was a terrible person. He’d have thought it would be easier to find compromising information on Andred, even if it wasn’t the sort Romana was hoping for.

Romana had asked him about it twice since making her initial request: once when they were hanging out at his house after school, and once over text. She was clearly very interested in the matter, but didn’t want to appear concerned. Brax could tell: she had yet to master covering up the fact that she cared, a skill he’d learned long ago.

He only hoped she wouldn’t ruin homecoming by obsessing over it. Leela was still going as Andred’s date, much to Romana’s chagrin, and Brax was quite certain she might ruin the whole evening by moping over it. Not, of course, that Romana ever moped. 

(Actually, Brax suspected that she moped quite a lot. He just wasn’t ever going to bring it up to her. He could imagine the conversation if he did: “Brax, are you saying that I’m  _ moping?” _ “What else would you call it?” “Not  _ that.”) _

Still, when Romana showed up at his house to pick him up, he was so busy brooding (not  _ moping, _ there was a  _ difference) _ over these things that he didn’t notice until she began honking her horn.

He was ready, of course: Braxiatel was the sort of person who was  _ always _ ready, no matter what. He’d been ready for about an hour already: his normal three-piece suit exchanged for a tuxedo, dark hair carefully combed, then gelled, then ever so carefully mussed up again. Irving Braxiatel had a reputation for being extra and going over the top, and he valued it. He wasn’t going to let people down now, on the night of a dance, when people ostensibly cared the most about how other people looked.

Besides, this was Gallifrey. This was perhaps the nerdiest school in a fifty-mile radius. Even the jocks were smart. (Alright, most of the jocks were smart. There were one or two Brax could think of –– people like Janartis –– who didn’t fit the Gallifreyan stereotype, but then, universalism was  _ never _ accurate, was it?) The good people of Gallifrey cared very much about everyone else, because no one had enough of a life to have interests  _ beyond _ grades and gossip. And Brax, who did have a life beyond those things, wasn’t about to help them rise above such petty nonsense. In fact, he rather enjoyed it.

He had one or two worries about the dance –– this Prydon who was supposedly going to be there, whether or not Monan High would try to crash the dance with their faces painted blue, since they’d won the football game, and of course, whether or not Romana would actually enjoy the dance or spend the entire time focused on Leela and Andred –– but these worries were momentarily driven from his mind when he saw Romana.

She was beautiful.

Well, she was always beautiful, Brax supposed. She was always dressed smartly and had her own distinct aesthetic tastes, which Brax appreciated. (She could rock a pink pastel leather jacket while still looking intimidating, a feat Brax rather admired her for.)

Brax didn’t know a whole lot about women’s fashion. He knew plenty about makeup, of course; he even indulged in it himself once in a while. His knowledge of men’s fashion knew no limits. But women’s fashion wasn’t something he’d ever delved into. Now, looking at Romana, he wished he had, if only so that he could come up with sufficient words to describe what she was wearing and exactly how stunning it looked on her. The only word he could actually come up with was  _ red. _ Because that was, in fact, the color of her dress.

He smiled at her, and hated how much he felt like a lovestruck high school boy. If he had a mustache, he was sure, none of this would have happened. He would have magically been granted the ability to constantly be smooth and suave and slightly intimidating. Not temporarily lost for words because his crush looked pretty. No, he reminded himself forcefully. Not crush. He was above using such juvenile words. The love of his life.

Actually, that sounded almost worse.

To make up for the fact that he was  _ still _ standing there, not even having said hello, exactly like a lovestruck idiot, he cleared his throat and widened his grin and said, “Wow.”

This was perhaps neither the most clever nor the most original thing Brax could have said, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. 

Romana rolled her eyes at him. “Come on, Brax, or we’ll have to drop the adverb from ‘fashionably late.’”

Brax blinked. “Ah. Of course. Begging your pardon.” As they walked to the car, he tried again. “You really do look great, Romana. Like a vermilion princess.”

She raised her eyebrows at that. “A princess?” she asked, like she was holding back a sniff of superiority. “I’d have thought I’m a queen, at  _ least. _ Empress, even.” She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Princess,” she muttered.

“You’re right,” Brax conceded. “You’re actually more like a goddess, living among the rest of us mere mortals.”

“Don’t overdo it, Braxiatel. If you get much more sycophantic, you’ll break something.”

“Am I being a sycophant, Romana? Really? I have nothing to gain from complimenting you, you know. Maybe I’m being truthful.” And really, he was. Mostly. She did look like a goddess, he thought. Just a short, bossy one. And she really was a vision of loveliness, even more than usual.

She unsuccessfully hid a grin from him. “Thanks, I think. For your  _ honesty.” _ She said the last word with a veneer of sarcasm, but it was punctured by her shining eyes.

The drive to the dance was slightly awkward. Brax wanted to know if it was alright to hold her hand, since he was her date, except he was only her date as a friend, and he wasn’t quite sure how that changed the rules. He wondered if his role as date for the evening would include things generally considered less “friend” and more “boyfriend,” if only to get this Prydon guy to leave Romana alone.

“This Prydon who’s supposed to be there,” Brax said, deciding that now was as good a time as any to ask. “Where’s he from?”

Romana shrugged, glancing at him sideways before returning her eyes to the road. “I think he goes to the Catholic high school just outside of town?” she ventured. “I didn’t bother to ask, I was just trying to be as uninviting as I could while also being polite.” She shrugged. “From the way he acted, he may as well have been from a different universe.”

Brax could sympathize with that. “And he didn’t get the hint, I take it, from the other things you’ve said about him?”

She raised her eyebrows at that, an expression of disbelief crossing her face, only for a second, like she was still shocked at the events of the trip. “He  _ did _ bite me,” she replied. She glanced at Brax again. “Did I really never tell you any of this?”

“He did  _ what?” _ Brax asked, ignoring her question in favor of shock.

Romana sighed. “In all fairness, I did say, ‘What are you gonna do, bite me?’” She shook her head. “I didn’t think he’d  _ actually _ do it.”

“Was it in a harmful way or a kinky way?” Brax asked, not because the question needed asking, but more because this seemed the right thing to ask at this time.

Romana rolled her eyes and took a hand off the steering wheel to punch him in the arm. “What do you think?” she asked. Her voice trailed off slightly, and Brax wondered if there was perhaps a  _ dumbass _ being left unspoken at the end of her question. It would make sense, he supposed, as he was rather acting like a dumbass, but Romana was far too classy to say something like that. She occasionally allowed herself a  _ damn _ and only once had he ever heard her let loose a  _ fuck, _ and other than that, her mouth was probably the cleanest at school. Aside from maybe those weird religious types that Gallifrey seemed to attract, but Brax didn’t associate with the weird religious types on the perfectly understandable grounds that these kids were, by and large, losers. And since Brax was not a loser by any definition, he could avoid them with relative ease.

“If you refuse to tell me, then I’m going to assume it was in a kinky way,” Brax informed Romana. This was perhaps not the wisest thing he could have said to her, but it was, he thought, the funniest.

She took one hand off the steering wheel to hit his arm. “I don’t know why I’m always defending you,” she said, sounding annoyed. “You really are a bastard.”

“Comes in the job description.” Brax beamed, and he was  _ sure _ his teeth flashed in the evening light, but Romana had her eyes on the road, not on him. 

She rolled her eyes, in a very Romana-like fashion. “You’re a jobless sixteen-year-old whose only goal in life is to be annoying and pretentious.”

“That’s right!” Brax replied cheerfully. “Being a bastard is literally my only job in life.”

The rest of the ride was in silence: not an awkward, painful silence, the sort of silence that might fill a first date. This was the companionable silence of two people who had been friends for years, who were happy to just sit in each other’s presence and enjoy life.

––––––––

Narvin was at the homecoming dance, not because he particularly wanted to be there, but because his two options were to either stay at home with his parents, and they apparently wanted a board game night and he’d really rather die than play board games with them, or to come to the dance. It was really the lesser of two evils.

He was also slightly nervous, because he’d told his parents that he’d be staying over at his “friend” Irving Braxiatel’s house.

“Your friend?” his mother had asked, wrinkling her nose. “You’ve never mentioned friends before.”

“That’s because we’ve only just gotten past the acquaintance stage,” Narvin replied uncomfortably. He didn’t actually want to refer to the other boy as a friend, but his parents would be even more confused about him staying the night at an acquaintance’s house.

“I still don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention this boy before,” his father had said. “Irving Braxiatel? I’ve never heard of the Braxiatels.”

“Oh, that’s his middle name,” Narvin interjected quickly, breathing a sigh of relief. His parents loved nothing more than to suck up to rich families, and when they heard Brax’s last name, they’d be just fine with their son hanging out with him. “He goes by his first name and his middle name. Usually just his middle name, in fact. He’s a Lungbarrow.”

His parents were silent for a few moments. Then his father said, “Didn’t their one son run off? Make the local headlines?”

Narvin gave a nervous smile, panicking internally. “He, uh, he did. This summer. But Braxiatel doesn’t really talk to his brother. They’re rather like complete opposites.” Aside from the disconcerting smile, Narvin added mentally. And the way both were weirdly knowledgeable on random topics. And the way they were both known by both their first and middle names. And the… 

He brought himself back the topic at hand. If he was supposed to be convincing his parents that Brax was the polar opposite of Theta Sigma, then he needed to stop thinking of the ways in which the two brothers were similar.

He offered his parents a thin smile, wishing he didn’t have to pull out his unpleasant-but-not-actually-misbehaving routine on them. “Brax doesn’t really talk about his brother, mostly because they didn’t get along before Theta Sigma ran off. To the best of my knowledge, they haven’t talked since then.”

His parents exchanged relieved glances. “What about the 48-hour rule?” his father finally asked.

“Um, I did ask on Monday,” Narvin said. He had not actually asked on Monday. He hadn’t had a plan on Monday. But his parents had decided on Wednesday that the weekend was going to be an important  _ family _ thing, and they weren’t saying how. At best, this meant doing chores around the house. At worst, it meant driving an hour to visit his extended family who all hated him. Regardless, Narvin didn’t want to take part in anything that had  _ family _ stuck on the front of it, because Narvin didn’t really care for his family. And Irving Braxiatel was his way out of it. 

It was the least Brax could do, really, for all the trouble he’d caused Narvin this year. Between forcing Narvin to interact with other people and tutor Leela and find dirt on Andred, Brax had made Narvin’s life miserable this year. And it was only late September.

His father gave his mother a confused look. His mother looked just as baffled.

“I did,” Narvin insisted, pressing on before they could start vocalizing their suspicions. “I asked about it on Monday, right after I got home.” He paused, then added, “Neither of you said anything, so I thought that meant there wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Or maybe we just didn’t hear you,” his father replied, but there was a note of defeat in his voice.

Narvin breathed a silent sigh of relief. “See you later,” he said, and walked out the door, desperately hoping his parents wouldn’t try to stop him. He had a dance to go to, as much as he wasn’t looking forward to it.

The dance was pretty much exactly what Narvin had been expecting. The music was too loud, the people were dancing too close together, and he was really only interested in the tables set out in one corner that were covered in food. He didn’t  _ dance, _ and he didn’t want to dance. The idea of  _ going _ to a dance fell somewhere between “repulsive” and “abhorrent” on the Narvin scale of how much he hated something.

(A lot of things fell in that area on the Narvin scale of how much he hated something. Narvin wasn’t exactly prone to enjoying things.)

He saw some people he was on speaking terms with: Darkel, dancing stiffly with Valyes, neither one looking all that thrilled about their choice in dance partner; Hallan keeping watch while Henzil snuck something suspicious in the punch bowl; Matthias talking animatedly to a boy Narvin didn’t recognize, but was wearing a letterman (over his  _ suit, _ an appalling fashion choice that Narvin hoped everyone was judging) with Phaidon High’s colors.

And then, with all the dramatic tension of a shitty teen movie, Narvin’s eyes landed on her. Leela. In the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by some of the other female athletes, dancing her heart out. Her dress was short — shorter than was technically allowed, and Narvin resisted the urge to go tell one of the teachers who’d been roped into chaperoning the dance — and close-fitting. Her arms and legs, toned and tanned from all the time spent outdoors, were on full display for everyone to see, and her red hair, normally at least semi-contained by a ponytail, hung around her shoulders in curls.

She was mesmerizing, Narvin realized, and immediately tried to squash the thought. This wasn’t  _ appropriate, _ she was stupid and rude and his parents would  _ kill _ him if they found out he thought she was, well, pretty. She had a  _ boyfriend,  _ she hated Narvin, this was all so  _ wrong. _

But he couldn’t force himself to look anywhere else.

“Narv! I didn’t think I’d see you here!” A wickedly cheerful voice interrupted Narvin from his increasingly panicked thoughts, and he tore his gaze away from Leela so forcefully that he was almost surprised it didn’t make a noise.

He narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on Ace, resplendent in a Braxlike three-piece suit, her hair in a loose French braid down her back, but his eyes kept darting back to Leela.

“What dragged you out from your bare, damp cave to join the rest of the world?” Ace asked.

Narvin didn’t reply. Leela was showing one of the other girls (Rodan? He thought her name was Rodan.) how to do some sort of dance move, and she’d broken down in laughter, her curls becoming more and more disarrayed.

“Oh,” Ace commented, her eyes finding the people (or rather, person) Narvin was watching.  _ “Oh.” _ She glanced at Narvin. “You like Leela?”

Narvin could feel his face turning red, even as he began sputtering out a protest, windmilling his arms and feeling his voice go squeaky. “Do I like —  _ do I like _ —  _ why _ — of  _ course _ not, what are you even thinking?” He paused, took a deep breath, cleared his throat, forced his eyebrows down into their usual scowling place on his forehead. “If you must know,” he said, keeping his voice even, controlled, “her hemline is above fingertip length.” It was true, technically, even if that wasn’t the reason he was staring at her.

He tried to ignore Ace’s knowing, cheeky grin, the way her eyes glinted with mischief in the dimmed lights. “Is it just me, or is it rather warm in here?” he asked, offering a pained smile in Ace’s general direction. 

“It’s just you,” she assured him.

“Thanks.” He craned his neck, looking around the room as if searching for someone. “You haven’t seen Braxiatel or Romana, have you?”

“Don’t think I don’t see you trying to change the subject,” Ace replied, her smirk still firmly in place.

Narvin let out a loud huff of breath, doing his best to communicate exactly how annoyed he was feeling at the world-in-general, but especially at Ace. “I’m… going outside,” he finally said, keeping his eyes away from Leela with an effort. “Getting some fresh air.” 

“Have fun! I’ll be sure to tell Leela that you were  _ gazing _ upon her with  _ reverence, _ like a love struck dunce!”

Narvin flipped her off. To hell with the fact that she was a freshman, she was still the most annoying person he’d ever met.

As he walked out of the hall the homecoming committee had rented for the night, he passed by Romana and Brax, just entering, even though the dance had started half an hour earlier. They both were dressed to the nines: Romana in a deep red and heels so tall she was almost Narvin’s height; Brax in what appeared to be a tuxedo. Trust Gallifrey High’s celebrity almost-couple to somehow overdress for  _ homecoming. _

Brax’ eyes widened at the sight of Narvin, and Narvin remembered, barely suppressing a grimace at the thought, that he needed to talk to Brax about staying over at his house that night.

“Narvin,” Brax said, his voice deeper than normal, in a way that Narvin was sure was 

supposed to sound mysterious. In reality, it sounded like Brax was trying to use a bedroom voice on him, and he didn’t really appreciate that. “I need to see you about —” he glanced at Romana quickly — “about something.”

Romana rolled her eyes. “Brax, I thought you were  _ my _ date to this, not Narvin’s?”

Brax’s face lit up at being referred to as her date and he turned to her, his upper lip working over his teeth in a way that would have made his mustache quiver, had he not recently shaved it off. “But of  _ course, _ Romana, my star-blazing queen of the night,” Brax said, his voice obsequious and sycophantic.

“Careful, Braxiatel,” Narvin warned. “You’re kissing her ass so much your nose is turning brown.” 

Romana snorted.

The night air was cool on Narvin’s flushed cheeks. It was the beginning of October, and the weather was beginning to behave accordingly: the trees were turning brilliant shades of orange, yellow, and red, and the nights were dropping down into cool temperatures. Narvin no longer had to sweat in his flannels at school, because the air had finally become pleasant, rather than overwhelmingly warm.

Inside was dangerous, Narvin decided. Inside, there was Ace and there was Romana and there was Brax. And there was  _ Leela. _ He didn't know why he’d reacted to seeing her the way he had, like he’d  _ liked _ her or something. He flushed again, feeling the burning sensation rise up from his cheeks into his ears. The music and loud voices could be heard, even outside.  _ That _ was why he wasn’t calming down, surely.

He stalked off, trying to find somewhere a bit quieter, a bit cooler, a bit darker. Narvin needed his alone time, his time to sit and contemplate and sulk. He walked past a small group of students he didn’t recognize, but he did recognize the smell of weed coming off of them as he walked past. Every high school has a group of stoners, and Gallifrey High was no exception. Their stoners were a little unusual, though, in that they all dressed like Neo from  _ The Matrix  _ and thought the movie was prophetic. Narvin didn’t know why Gallifrey seemed to spawn so many weird, homegrown semi-religious movements, but he wasn’t about to stop and ask them about it, either.

“I’d turn around if I were you,” one of the stoners called out. Narvin dimly remembered that they liked to be called Matrix Keepers, although he couldn’t understand why. She was still wearing 90s-esque sunglasses, even in the darkness.

“I’m not about to narc on you,” Narvin said. And really, he couldn’t. Recreational marijuana had been legalized in the most recent election and they weren’t on school property, so there was no way he could get them for anything.

If the girl was giving him any sort of facial expression, he missed it. After an uncomfortably long silence, she finally said, “I’m not scared of you, I’d just turn around if I were you.” She jerked her head over towards the small parking lot. “Some idiots getting it on on the hood of that one jock’s car.” She shrugged, slowly, and took a drag on her blunt. “Unless you’re into that.”

That made Narvin stop in his tracks. “...Which jock’s car?” he asked.

She shrugged again and turned to her friends, producing a bottle of water from the pocket of her coat for someone who couldn’t stop coughing. “That’s gonna hit you hard,” she told the person. “Maybe you’ll be the next one to read truthful timelines from  _ The Matrix.” _

Narvin moved on before she could turn her attention back to him. His interest — and concern — had been piqued by her comments. Leela had been by herself inside, or at least, without her boyfriend, even though everyone knew Andred had asked her to homecoming by recreating that scene from  _ 10 Things I Hate About You, _ where Heath Ledger’s character embarrassed himself on the bleachers of the football field in front of everyone just to ask out Julia Stiles’ character.

(Narvin had been grudgingly impressed by it. He wasn’t about to tell anyone that  _ 10 Things I Hate About You _ was one of his favorite movies, but it had been since he pirated it in his freshman year, after his parents forbade him from watching it. His first act of teenage rebellion.)

Sure enough, as Narvin got closer to the rows of cars, he could see two figures on the hood of Andred’s old Corolla. They didn’t appear to be  _ getting it on, _ like the stoner had implied, but then again, she wasn’t necessarily the most trustworthy person he knew.

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dress pants and walked a little bit closer, making it look like he was going to a different car, but keeping the two figures in the corner of his eye the whole time.

When he got close enough to see what was happening, he wished he hadn’t. The stoner had been right; he should have turned around. He hadn’t wanted to see Andred and Pandora shoving their tongues down each other’s throats in the most disgustingly high school display of making out he’d ever seen.

But as he turned around, his mind wasn’t on his gossip spreadsheet or his deal with Brax. The only person on his mind was Leela, back inside, dancing like she didn’t have a care in the world.


End file.
